Surface treatments of plant fibers and their effects on mechanical properties of fiber-reinforced composites: A review

The need of natural fiber-reinforced composites is increasing at very fast rate because of their ecofriendly production, decomposition, high specific strength, abundance, good physical and mechanical properties. Available literature reveals that past researchers have done a lot of work for the preparation and characterization of fiber-reinforced composites. While developing natural fiber composites, researchers encountered various problems like hydrophilic nature of natural fibers, incompatibility of natural fibers with matrix materials, thermal instability of natural fibers, and poor interfacial bonding between reinforcing phase and matrix phase. However, some of these problems can be solved to a greater extent by considering surface treatment of natural fibers before they are used in the preparation of fiber-reinforced composites. Thus, there is a need for understanding the effect of several surface treatments on the mechanical properties of fiber-reinforced composites. The aim of this paper is to put forth a comprehensive review on the effects of different surface treatments on the mechanical properties such as tensile strength, flexural strength, and impact strength and also interfacial shear strength of the fiber-reinforced composites.