| Abstract [eng] |
Natural fibre composites (NFCs) have the potential to enter new markets and demonstrate rising demand, mainly owing to their natural abundance, lightweight nature, high strength-to-weight ratio, and relatively low cost [1]. In addition, predicting the performance and characteristics of materials and components is growing in popularity in several industries [2,3]. This research analyses the elastic properties of hemp natural fibre with a bio-epoxy matrix with the addition of synthetic and natural fibres, considering the influence of fibre volume fractions. The developed representative volume element (RVE) models incorporated varying fibre volume fractions (10%-70%) and different combinations of fibre systems. In a single fibre system, hemp/bio-epoxy plastic composite was investigated. In a hybrid fibre system, flax and S-glass were added as second-phased materials separately with natural fibre hemp to investigate its effect on the elastic characteristics of plastic composite. Furthermore, synthetic S-glass fibre was added with natural hemp and flax fibres in a multi-fibre system. Periodic boundary conditions were utilized to determine the effective elastic properties using the Mori-Tanaka homogenization scheme and finite element analysis. These RVE models evaluated longitudinal, transverse, and shear moduli in addition to Poisson’s ratio. The elastic properties were simulated and validated by comparing them with analytical results. The analytical results were obtained using the rule of mixtures, Halpin–Tsai, Nielsen, Chamis, and composite cylinder assemblage. The simulation results suggest that in addition to the fibre volume fraction (VF) increasing from 10% to 70%, the longitudinal modulus, transversal modulus, shear modulus, and Poisson’s ratio changed from 9.72 GPa to 55.25 GPa, 1.50 GPa to 7.23 GPa, 0.53 GPa to 2.65 GPa, and from 0.28 to 0.19. The composite cylinder assembly model demonstrated superior results among all analytical methodologies; however, the Nielsen model exhibited the lowest values. The investigation results of the RVE unidirectional model proved strong agreement between analytical and numerical methodologies. |
