Compression failure of Sustainable Natural fibre Composites

Natural fibre-reinforced polymer composites will play a crucial role in meeting NetZero requirements as they combine environmental sustainability with excellent mechanical properties at low weight. Despite their advantages, such composites exhibit poor performance under compressive loading due to issues like fibre kinking. Our focus turns to understanding the behaviour of kinking during compressive failure. This requires high frame rate imaging, as catastrophic kink band initiation occurs quickly. To capture this event with the necessary high spatial resolution, we propose in-situ compression on ID19. In this beamtime, we aim to understand the compressive performance of newly developed flax fibre reinforced polymer (FFRP) composites, in which the epoxy resin is made of renewable resources, the so-called ‘greenpoxy’. This work will lead to new designs to improve their compressive performance by suppressing kinking band formation.