Project Description: Sustainability is an ongoing challenge within the composites sector, with natural fibres presenting a potential avenues for nations to utilise locally sourced material for structural applications, rather than having to source materials from abroad, which can be expensive both in terms of cost and emissions. The challenge with natural fibres when it comes to composite materials is that they have historically struggled to provide the same reinforcement performance as consistently as can be found when using either carbon or glass fibre. One of the reasons behind this is that the surface of said fibres traditionally does not like to bond or adhere to the polymer resin chemistries we use in most high-performance composite applications.

The project, in partnership with the University of Mauritius, will look to explore how applying different surface treatments to fibres sourced from Mauritius impacts their performance at the fibre-matrix interface level. Fibres of interest include banana, coir and pineapple. The project will be heavily experimental, and will be supported by multiple PhD students based within the Advanced Composites Group (ACG).

Project objectives: The key aims/objectives for the project will be as follows:

(i) Conduct a literature review into what surface treatments have traditionally be used in the past to improve the adhesion of natural fibres.

(ii) Apply different surface treatments to the different fibre types, and evaluate the effect of the stress transfer capability of the interface through use of the microbond test.

(iii) Utilise microscopy to analyse the effect (and quality) of the surface treatment(s) applied to the fibres, as well as evaluate the failure mechanics of the tested microbond samples.