A review of bast fibres and their composites: Part 3 – Modelling

This paper extends an earlier two-part review of bast fibres and their composites. The paper presents recent statistical models which have been applied to natural fibre reinforcements for composite systems. Recent research suggests that the rules-of-mixture should be extended to include the effects of porosity, fibre diameter and yarn twist. A new fibre area correction factor is introduced to correct for the over-estimate of fibre cross-section which occurs when an apparent cross-sectional area is calculated from the “diameter” measured normal to the fibre axis.