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Chemical Composition of Natural Fibers and its Influence on their Mechanical Properties

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Mechanics of Composite Materials Aims and scope

The conventional composites are replacing such well-established structural materials as steel, iron, and aluminum very fast. The conventional composites are not easily disposable. To overcome the problems of disposability and pollution, the focus is on the fabrication of natural composite materials. The natural composite materials are made from natural fibers and natural resins. Various natural fibers, such as jute, hemp, coir, cotton, and others are used in industry to fabricate natural composite materials. The fibers are load-carrying members in the composites. The main constituents of the fibers are cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin, pectin, and wax. The composition of fibers depends on the geographic location where the plants are grown up. The peculiarity is the fact that all the fibers have the same constituents, but with different composition, which makes the fibers to behave differently. In this work, the Pearson rank correlation coefficients are found between the composition and properties of the fibers, and the corresponding equations of regression lines are obtained.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr.M.Mohan Rao, Director of CCMB (Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology), Hyderabad, India, for allowing us to take SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) Images. We also thank Saad M. Ahsan for the help in taking SEM images and Thierry Fahmy from Addinsoft (2014) XLSTAT 2014 for permitting us to use the trail version of the software for regression analysis.

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Correspondence to A. Komuraiah.

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Russian translation published in Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, Vol. 50, No. 3, pp. 509-528 , May-June, 2014.

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Komuraiah, A., Kumar, N.S. & Prasad, B.D. Chemical Composition of Natural Fibers and its Influence on their Mechanical Properties. Mech Compos Mater 50, 359–376 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11029-014-9422-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11029-014-9422-2

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