AN ACOUSTIC EMISSION STUDY OF THE MOISTURE EFFECT ON THE TENSILE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF FLAX FIBER REINFORCED THERMOPLASTIC COMPOSITES

Among the bottlenecks of using natural fiber reinforced composites in various industries, one can mention the natural fibers’ sensitivity to moisture uptake and in turn, the resulted detrimental effects on their mechanical properties. Therefore, in this study, the Acoustic Emission (AE) technique is used to investigate the effects of moisture uptake on the tensile mechanical properties of flax fiber reinforced Polypropylene (Flax-PP) composites. Three groups of specimens containing different amounts of moisture are considered. Not only were the AE analyses used to justify the different mechanical behaviour of the specimen groups, but also the AE activities were correlated with changes in the load-displacement curves.