Reinforcements: Non-woven and paper based epoxy composites

An investigation was conducted to compare paper reinforcements with a commercially available flax fibre spun lace reinforcement and a viscose spun lace reinforcement. Both paper and natural fibre spun laces reinforce the resin significantly. It was shown that paper can outperform both spun laces in terms of tensile strength and Young's modulus. Even paper composites made from untreated eucalyptus pulp achieve higher tensile strengths than the spun laces. Furthermore the tensile strength of paper composites can be strongly increased by refining and fibre orientation. The fibre orientation of the paper leads to a corresponding anisotropy in the composite properties. The Young's moduli of paper composites are not necessarily higher than that of natural fibre spun lace reinforced composites. The reason why the Young's moduli of some papers composites are lower than that of the spun lace reinforced composites is yet unclear.