Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Composites are lightweight materials made from reinforcement fibers held together in a polymer, metal or ceramic matrix. Common fibers include glass or carbon and common resins include epoxy or polyester. The problem is that these fibers are produced from high energy processes, or are non biodegradable, or are difficult to recycle, or all of these at the same time. Polymers are also derived from petroleum products. In short many of the current composite materials are not sustainable. A logical trend has been to introduce rapid growth, biodegradable, natural fibres reinforcements. Research challenges include the design and development of reliable and productive processes used to manufacture them, and on controlling the impact of the inherently high variability arising when working with such ""living"" materials. Flax, hemp and other similar long fibres, woven or in the form of mats, have been introduced as reinforcements in the design of a variety of polymer matrix eco-composite parts. However, woven fibers or mats do not exploit the full strength potential of the fibres. In order to do so the fibres, instead of being woven or unoriented, must rather be aligned with the load direction. Furthermore, the weaving process deforms the fibres locally at their intersection. This is detrimental to the resulting mechanical properties. In an attempt to solve these important problems, the potential of using long unidirectional fibres deposited on short non-oriented wood fibers (i.e. paper), using the pilot paper making machine on UQTR campus, was investigated. A few ""proof of concept"" runs were tried on the pilot machine and a few samples of a hybrid, double layer, dry flax-paper reinforcement were successfully manufactured. As a result the paper machine structure is currently being modified for efficiently feeding it with flax. It is reasonably believed that many parameters of this new manufacturing process should significantly affect the properties of both the dry flax-paper reinforcement and the final molded eco-composite part that result. It is therefore the research objective of this proposal to understand, evaluate and optimize this new process for eco-composite material manufacturing.