Fracture behaviour of natural fibre reinforced composites

This paper deals with the microfracture behaviour of natural fibre reinforced composite materials. The acoustic emission (AE) method was applied to detect various micro-scale energy release phenomena during tensile deformation not only of Manila hemp fibre, but also of three kinds of composites with three different fibre orientation angles, namely 0, 45 and 90. In the case of Manila hemp fibre testing, low amplitude AE events (40–60 dB) were measured at an intermediate strain range and high amplitude events were also measured at a final fracture stage. In the case of 0 composite, AE signals having a wide range of amplitude distribution were measured from the beginning of deformation and the AE activity was found to become significant with further tensile deformation. On the other hand, a few AE data with low amplitude were measured in 45 and 90 composites. In conclusion, low and high amplitude AE events observed during tensile deformation of natural fibre composites originated from fibre splitting and fibre fracture, respectively