DEVELOPMENT OF A CONTINUOUS RAMIE SINGLE YARN REINFORCED COMPOSITE STRAND

摘要

Glass fibers, one of the representative reinforcements for polymer matrix composites, have many excellent physical and mechanical properties such as low density, heat resistance, wear resistance, high specific strength and stiffness and so on. Glass fiber reinforced composites have thus been investigated for many years because of their huge demands in industry. On the other hand, they have disadvantage such as difficulty in disposing at their final lifetime. Global environmental problems and energy shortage have brought the focus of making alternative materials from biomass resources all over the world. Natural fibers have become suitable alternatives to glass fibers. They are abundant, biodegradable, renewable, and have similar specific properties to glass fibers. Thus, there has been increasing attention to improvement of natural fibers as reinforcement of polymer matrix composites that can be replaced for petroleum-based fibers dominated in various fields so far.