ABSTRACT

Plant-based natural bers are often used as a reinforcing material for environmentally friendly green composites. A composite material can be dened as a macroscopic combination of two or more distinct materials of continuous and discontinuous medium, having a recognizable interface between them. The discontinuous medium that is stiffer and stronger than the continuous phase is called the reinforcement and the so-called continuous phase is referred to as the matrix. A composite material can provide superior and unique mechanical and physical properties, because it combines the most desirable properties of its constituents while suppressing the least desirable properties. The properties of a composite are dependent on the properties of the constituent materials, and their distribution and interaction. At present, composite materials play a key role in aerospace industry, automobile industry, and other engineering applications as they exhibit outstanding strength to weight and modulus to weight ratio. Based on the matrix material, which forms the continuous phase, the composites are broadly classied into metal matrix, ceramic matrix, and polymer matrix composites. Among these, polymer matrix composites are much easier to fabricate than the rest, due to relatively low processing temperature. Several researchers investigated the structure, properties, and applications of various composites (Amash and Zugenmaier 1998; Gonzalez and Yong 1998; Kishore 1998; Oya and Hamada 1998; Raghavan and Wool 1999; Srivastava and Hogg 1998; Thomas and Winstone 1998; Tjong and Meng 1999; Zheng et al. 1999). In recent decades, natural bers as an alternative reinforcement in polymer composites have attracted wide attention due to their advantages over conventional glass and carbon bers (Saheb and Jog 1999). Natural bers are environmentally friendly not only for their savings in process energy, which is an unavoidable problem for synthetic bers, but also for their renewable and biodegradable characteristics to protect the environment.