Effective properties of cell wall layers in bast fiber

The objective of this paper is to present the effective properties of the secondary layer of plant cell wall computed via 3D finite element method. Due to varied structural organization and volume fraction of constituents, a set of different volume fractions of constituents in the cell wall are chosen in this study and their effective properties are computed. In order to accomplish the objective, 3D unit cell of the secondary layer is analyzed using the well established micro-mechanical finite element model. The effective properties computed are compared with the existing semi-empirical models and multi pass homogenization technique. Semi-empirical Tsai-Hahn relations in conjunction with rule of mixtures are observed to be very close to the 3D FEM results obtained.