Effect of Moisture in Flax Fibres on the Quality of their Composites

Moisture present in plant fibres is considered to be detrimental to the performance of composites. In general, a drying stage is performed on the plant fibre fabrics before manufacturing the composites since it is seemed to allow better output. This work provides an analysis of the effect of moisture in flax fibres on the overall quality of epoxy/flax biocomposites. Flax fibre fabrics were conditioned at different relative humidity (RH) environments and composites were manufactured by vacuum infusion technique. Composites were characterized by mechanical and microstructural analysis. Results showed that manufacturing composites with highly humid fabrics (95% RH) generates post processing deformation of finished parts and also leads to poor microstructural quality. The moisture in the fibres with different RH reduced the stiffness (from 23.74 to 17.67 GPa for Young's modulus and from 16.28 to 11.82 GPa for flexural modulus) but increased their fracture strain (from 1.87 to 2.64). Tensile strength displayed an optimum value (287.96 MPa) for fabrics conditioned at 50% RH, but flexural strength decreases continuously from 225.12 to 152.34 MPa as the moisture in the fabric increases.