A physical characterisation for the preliminary fabrication of natural woven fabric prepreg and their composites

Abstract

In order to find alternative composite material that possesses the ability for a great revival of structural application, cheap and environmentally friendly, natural woven fabric prepreg have earned its place as a replacement to traditional synthetic fabric prepreg. However, the limitation is the applicability of techniques of fabrication, which are compatible with the different properties of natural woven fabrics. The investigation on the individual material of natural woven fabric and resin are also essential to recognise the factor that influences the fabrication process of prepreg product. A preliminary experiment conducted on three different types of natural woven fabric, i.e., flax, bamboo, and jute in the form of a single-layer prepreg product which combined with Acrodur polyester resin. The resin content and their dispersion, prepreg, fibre and resin area weight are the parameters evaluated. The produced natural woven fabric prepregs have retained the resin content more than 50% (55.7–63.6%) for jute and flax, but only 47.6% resin content for bamboo material. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd 2020.