Development of a Natural Fiber Mat Plywood Composite

• Main Author: Anthireddy, Prasanna Kumar
• Other Authors: Shi, Sheldon
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: University of North Texas 2017
• Subjects: Fiber Mat; Plywood; Hemp; Hemp > Industrial applications.; Fibrous composites.; Plywood.
• Online Access: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1011815/

Natural fibers like kenaf, hemp, flax and sisal fiber are becoming alternatives to conventional petroleum fibers for many applications. One such applications is the use of Non-woven bio-fiber mats in the automobile and construction industries. Non-woven hemp fiber mats were used to manufacture plywood in order to optimize the plywood structure. Hemp fiber mats possess strong mechanical properties that comparable to synthetic fibers which include tensile strength and tensile modulus. This study focuses on the use of hemp fiber mat as a core layer in plywood sandwich composite. The optimization of fiber mat plywood was done by performing a three factor experiment. The three factors selected for this experiment were number of hemp mat layers in the core, mat treatment of the hemp mat, and the glue content in the core. From the analysis of all treatments it was determined that single hemp mat had the highest effect on improving the properties of the plywood structure.