JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #92 - October/November 2014 - 23

Market

biocomposites

Bottlenecks to
the development of
biocomposite applications
Applications for biocomposites (polymers reinforced with plant
fibres) are gaining ground, due to the specific characteristics of
plant fibres. However, these materials have not reached a high
level of maturity, which explains why they still account for a
small share of the market.

By

Christophe Baley,
Professor
Limatb, Université de Bretagne Sud

B

iocomposite development requires
an innovation strategy, which in turn
requires approaches that not only involve multiple partners, but which are also
multicultural, multidisciplinary, trandisciplinary and multi-scale. "Transdisciplinary"
refers to the fact that, because this set of
challenging issues has high societal stakes,
the social and human sciences have a major
role to play here. The multiple-partner
aspect illustrates the fact that many areas of
knowledge are necessary, and should come
not only from academic circles, but also
the agricultural and industrial sectors. We
need to keep in mind how important all the
different types of know-how are in the field
of composite materials.
For the applications of the future, there are
various challenges to be met for glass or
carbon fibre reinforced composite materials
(Nicolais et al., 2011), such as:
- gaining more knowledge about the fibre/
matrix load transfer mechanisms and how

- Bottlenecks to the development of bio-composite
applications ................... p23
- Manufacturing gigantic
all-carbon-fibre parts:
challenging yet routine p28

they change over time;
- improving the long-term reliability of the
structures;
- controlling the material and energy
streams over the entire lifetime of a product
(at first, from cradle to grave, then from
cradle to cradle);
- developing and optimizing new design
and processing methods (the requirements
are expressed in terms of performance optimization, increase in production output,
and cost reduction);
- monitoring the material health of a structure throughout service life;
- integrating new functions.
These challenges obviously also concern
biocomposites. On the other hand, we're
talking about a "recent" line of materials,
and plant cell walls have specific characteristics that must be taken into account. This
article gives just an overview of the bottlenecks that need to be removed to allow the
large-scale development of biocomposites,
as the length of the article prohibits going
into a lot of detail. To make it easier to
understand the different notions, we will
illustrate using flax and hemp as examples,
since these fibres are grown and available
in France.

2012

Bottleneck 1: understanding why
we use biocomposites

NOVEMBER 17. 18. 19 . 20l4

JEC - 25 bd de l'Amiral Bruix -75116 Paris - France
www.jeccomposites.com

The use of plant fibres is not merely an act
of substitution, as they have specific characteristics that are worth taking advantage
No92 October - November 2014 /

jec composites magazine 23
http://www.jeccomposites.com
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #92 - October/November 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #92 - October/November 2014
