MECHANICAL PROPERTIES & APPLICATIONS OF NATURAL FIBRE-BASED COMPOSITE MATERIALS

Most of the studies are about the characterization of natural fibres and their comparison with conventional composites regarding mechanical behaviour and application performance. There are dozens of types of natural fibres with differentproperties influencing their use, or not, in specific industrial applications.The natural origin of these materials causes, in general, a wide range of variations in properties depending mainly on the harvesting location and conditions, making it difficult to select the appropriate fibre for a specific application.In this paper, a comprehensive review about the properties of natural fibres used as composite materials reinforcement is presented, aiming to map where each type of fibre is positioned in several properties.