Most fibres are highly irregular. This is particularly the case for natural fibres such as wool. Yet the published data concerning the mechanical properties of fibres have largely ignored this important fibre feature.
This paper reports our systematic studies on fibre irregularity and its impact on fibre mechanical properties. It summarises the major recent research in this area. We demonstrate, both empirically and theoretically, the significance of fibre geometrical irregularities and how these irregularities and their variations affect the fibre mechanical properties. We also show that the conventional Weibull distribution should be modified to describe the material strength of irregular fibres, and a modified Weibull distribution has been presented that can predict the gauge length effect of irregular fibres much more accurately than the conventional Weibull distribution.
We measured the fibre geometrical (diameter) variations along fibre length and examined their effect on changes in fibre breaking load and strain. We also modelled the mechanical behaviour of irregular fibres using a finite element method. We have found that the nature of fibre irregularity has a significant effect on all the important fibre mechanical properties.
By: X. Wang, W. He and L. Wang School of Engineering and Technology, Deakin University, Geelong, Austra
Submit Date: 6/7/2010 18:00