The Longitudinal and Transverse Tensile Properties of Unidirectional and Bidirectional Bamboo Fiber Reinforced Composites

Alkali treatment on bamboo fibers were reported to improve the interface strength with epoxy resin as formed to a composite. In order to reduce the process time of alkali treatment, bamboo fibers were treated in alkali with different concentrations under the room temperature. The alkali treatment process for the bamboo fibers, which results in a higher tensile strength, was used for the subsequent studies. Unidirectional and bidirectional BF preforms were constructed in our laboratory. The unidirectional (UD) and bidirectional (BD) BF/EP composites were fabricated using the bamboo fibers treated with the selected BF alkali treatment process. Tensile properties were measured in both the longitudinal and transverse directions for the UD and BD BF/EP composites with different fiber volume fractions. The UD BF/EP composite has good reinforcement effect in the fiber direction and the tensile strength is compatible to the reported results. However, the transverse strength of UD composites is weaker than the pure epoxy. For BD BF/EP composites, tensile strengths in both the longitudinal and transverse directions all show some improvement as compared to the pure epoxy.