Hybridization effect on the impact properties of flax composites

Nowadays, fibre-reinforced composites are used in a wide range of engineering applications, as consequence of their stability, lightweight and high stiffness. Environmental concerns and the need to create a circular economy reducing their carbon footprint, led to the investment in the use of environmentally friendly materials. Natural fibres have become a substitute for traditional composite reinforcement materials, however, the poor tolerance to accidental low velocity impacts of composite laminates is a limitation to their use in many industrial applications. Due to this fact, natural fibres reinforced composites mechanical properties must be fully characterized in order to predict impact behaviour of the structure, there are various types of damage which, because they are very difficult to detect, are dangerous and drastically affect the properties of these materials. The main goal of this study is to investigate the influence of fibre hybridization on the mechanical properties of hybrid flax/glass epoxy composite structure. Furthermore, the impact characterization of the different composites and their failure mechanism shows that hybridization improve the overall properties of the composites and presents as a good solution for the application of these type of materials, this work helps to understand and define the limits of their applications. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.