Sustainable biocomposites: Challenges, potential and barriers for development

Abstract

Since natural fibers have many advantages, modern societies start switching for new green materials including natural fibers to contribute meeting the demand of weight reduction, environmental issues as well as customer satisfaction attributes. However, fully replacement of green bio-composites has many challenges. Inadequate availability of data regarding the performance of bio-composites due to the large variety of their constituents is the most challenging barrier in this field. A gap in the way of assessing bio-composites relative to comprehensive desired criteria for various industrial applications have been revealed. Therefore, processing consideration and proper selection of the composite constituents and their characteristics should be extensively investigated in order to achieve good part design with bio-composites. Moreover, high coefficients of safety factors are still required in such green products. Inconsistency of natural fibers properties as a major drawback as well as others that limit their applications in bio-composites are comprehensively discussed here.