Bowen Xu, Bart van den Hurk, Sean J. D. Lugger, Tao Liu, Rijk Blok, Patrick Teuffel

Effect of environmental humidity on the creep behavior of flax fiber‐reinforced polymer composites

  • Materials Chemistry
  • Polymers and Plastics
  • General Chemistry
  • Ceramics and Composites
Save to CiteDrive Show PDF

AbstractFlax fiber‐reinforced polymer (FFRP) composites are emerging popular environmental‐friendly construction materials. However, their significant creep properties have been a major concern for using FFRP in load‐bearing structures. This article presents an investigation of the effect of environmental humidity on the creep behavior of the FFRP. Samples with flax fiber in 0°, 90°, and ± 45° were manufactured, respectively, by the vacuum infusion method. Accelerated creep tests were conducted on samples in different relative humidities (RH), and the results were analyzed by the time–temperature superposition principle (TTSP). It is found the creep development of samples with 0° and 90° fiber increases with the RH, and their 30‐year total strain in 97% RH is about 10 times higher than that in 11% RH. The samples with ±45° fiber are found not obviously sensitive to the humidity change. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) check indicates the change in the fiber–matrix interface and cracks between microfibrils in a fiber bundle is the main reason for the change of creep behavior in high humidity. This study may benefit the design of structures made of natural fiber‐reinforced polymer composites, especially for load‐bearing structures working in high‐humidity environments.

Need a simple solution for managing your BibTeX entries? Explore CiteDrive!

  • Web-based, modern reference management
  • Collaborate and share with fellow researchers
  • Integration with Overleaf
  • Comprehensive BibTeX/BibLaTeX support
  • Save articles and websites directly from your browser
  • Search for new articles from a database of tens of millions of references
Try out CiteDrive

More from our Archive