Development of a micromechanical testing method for single wood fibres

Abstract

Natural fibre-based materials are widely used in everyday life in the form of pa-per, paperboard, films, textiles and biocomposites. Environmental awareness andthe growing concern regarding the large energy consumption coupled to the pro-duction of traditional synthetic fibres have prompted several industries to searchfor sustainable materials to replace the traditional fibres. The usage of natural fi-bres in high-performance composites necessitates a thorough understanding of theirmechanical properties. In this thesis, a robust and high throughput method was de-veloped to conduct tensile tests on individual single wood fibres. Using this method,wood fibres of industrial origin were investigated, in particular, the effect of the hu-midity level on the tensile properties of these fibres was studied. Weibull statisticswere used to understand the strength and possible defects in microstructure of thefibres. The key conclusion drawn from this study is that with decreased relativehumidity level, the strength of the wood fibres increases. Also, fibres exposed to lowlevels of relative humidity has less defects on the microstructure level than fibresexposed to higher levels of humidity.