wondering if anyone here who could leave suggestions or opinions on applying Natural fiber , flax or Hemp for example, onto composites part design to replace glass?
don’t know about replacing glass for high load structural parts, but as a complimentary layer flax is great for dampening vibrations. A non structural part like bodypanels could be made from natural fibre alone, and the fibre could be used to as a bulk layer for building up stiffness, flax is lighter than glass.
What kind of suggestions would you need? Can you be more specific? Although still in an experimental state, much is known already.
Check out Lineo flax fiber, I made some foam core skateboards last year as a “sustainable” student project using flax fiber. Worked out pretty well, and got the Univ to pay for it all!
I would look into using hemp. I did a fair amount of research this past year into fiber comparisons. There were several favorable attributes to hemp. If I remember correctly, the strength to weight ratio is pretty good. You may not be able to find it in the weave your looking for…though there are various thread counts for hemp linen.
Good luck…
Hello Sungaia! you mean Hemp here is better than Flax in terms of strength to weight ratio? any suggested suppliers for this Hemp so that we could ask for some samples to run some tests. Thanks!
The problem I found with natural fibers is having the ability to source an “engineering grade material” that is consistent, clean, property data from the mfg.
Hello Cleuck, how do you think if Lineo, what price you paid for the material?
Don’t know about that. I just remember from researching natural fibers for composites that hemp came out on top.
Here’s a link to a concept car that Lotus was planning to build using hemp fiber composite in the body panels and the seats.
http://www.compositesworld.com/articles/eco-elise-concept-lean-speedy-and-green
Here are some links to online suppliers of hemp fiber/linen.
http://www.industrialhemp.net/distrib.html
http://www.hemptraders.com/
http://hempbasics.com/shop/Category/natural-hemp-linen
Good luck…!