The natural fiber composites based on bamboo fibers: a review

Abstract

Bamboo has found numerous applications in human life for centuries. In recent years however, bamboo has generated interest from researchers as a candidate to replace environmental unfriendly glass as fiber in fiber reinforced composites. This is due to the potential properties of bamboo that has high specific strength and stiffness besides being biodegradable, sustainable and renewable. This paper is to review on the properties of bamboo reinforced composites from numerous characterization studies of bamboo that are available in the literatures. The review is based on characterization studies on several types of bamboo reinforced composites such as laminated bamboo fiber reinforced composite, randomly oriented bamboo reinforced composite, hybrid fiber reinforced composite, bamboo fiber reinforced bio-composite and bamboo fiber sandwiched structure composite. It can be said that the laminated bamboo composite in general gives higher mechanical properties compare to other structural forms of bamboo composite. Even though bamboo bio-composite in general provides low mechanical properties, the properly design unidirectional bamboo bio-composite can also have high mechanical properties that are as good as the laminated bamboo reinforced composite. While specific tensile properties of laminated bamboo reinforced composite are at par with glass fiber reinforced composite, the mechanical properties of bamboo fiber reinforced composite are comparable to the mechanical properties of the best among natural fiber reinforced composites.