Volume 9, Issue 4, 2000

A Study of the Effect of Surface Treatments on the Thermal Stability of Flax Fibres

N. E. Zafeiropoulos* , C. A. Baillie and F. L. Matthews

Centre for Composite Materials and Materials Department, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK

                       *Author to whom correspondence should be addressed                                             e-mail: n.zafeiropoulos@ic.ac.uk

(Received 4/00; accepted 7/00)

ABSTRACT

There is an increasing interest in using natural fibres as reinforcing agents in composites. These fibres are considered to be a potential candidate to replace glass fibres in certain applications of composites. They have a number of advantages over glass fibres such as lower cost, lower density, non toxicity, recycleability and they are easier to process. However, natural fibres are not heat resistant like glass fibres and therefore they cannot be used with all polymer matrices. Furthermore, natural fibres are hydrophilic materials that do not adhere very well with most polymer matrices that are hydrophobic. Surface treatments are usually employed to improve adhesion in natural fibre composites. Nevertheless, the effect of these treatments upon the thermal stability of natural fibres has not been addressed sufficiently. In this letter seven grades of flax fibres were studied recently to determine their thermal stability profiles for potential use as reinforcements in composite materials. The results indicate that treated flax performs better than untreated flax. Acetylation and stearic acid treatments were found to increase the thermal stability of flax. Duralin flax was found to be sufficiently heat resistant to be usable with thermoplastics such as nylon 6, where the processing temperature is higher than it is for polyolefin matrices.