Hybrid synthetic and natural fibres in honeycomb sandwich composite structures for structural applications: A brief review.

Abstract

Lately, natural fibres reinforced composites are noticeably employed in various applications due to their lightweight, renewability, cheap in price, high strength-to-weight ratio, lower density, and energy requirements for processing. But aside from its advantages, natural fibres were lacks in term their applications, especially in certain environment and load requirement. To resolve the problem in load requirement, hybridization has gained huge consideration by researchers. The hybridization between natural fibre with synthetic-based materials can be formed into a sandwich structure to reduce the water absorption and provide optimal mechanical durability. On one hand, sandwich structure applications were exploited in various industrial sectors since they are excellence at absorbing energy aside from very lightweight, greater strength and stiffness-to-weight ratios. Yet, the application of hybrid natural/synthetic fibre composite in sandwich structure is still limited in structural sector. Thus, this paper reviews the potential use of hybrid natural/synthetic fibre material in a sandwich structure application. This article aids the researchers to provide a good source of literature for doing further research on this topic to consider them construction and building materials in term of crashworthiness and energy absorbing views.