| Highly biobased composites with properties and costs rivaling those consisting of synthetic constituents are a goal of much current research. The obvious material choices, vegetable oil based resins and natural fibers, present the challenges of poor resin properties and weak fiber/matrix bonding, respectively. Conventional methods of overcoming poor resin quality involve the incorporation of additives, which dilutes the resulting composite's bio-content and increases cost. To overcome these limitations while maintaining high bio-content and low cost, epoxidized sucrose soyate is combined with surface-treated flax fiber to produce biocomposites. These composites are fabricated using methods emphasizing scalability and efficiency, for cost effectiveness of the final product. This approach resulted in the successful production of biocomposites having properties that meet or exceed those of conventional pultruded members. These properties, such as tensile and flexural strengths of 223 and 253 MPa, respectively, were achieved by composites having around 85% bio-content. |
