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Review
. 2019 Oct 12;11(10):1667.
doi: 10.3390/polym11101667.

Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites: Manufacturing, Properties, and Applications

Dipen Kumar Rajak  1   2 , Durgesh D Pagar  3 , Pradeep L Menezes  4 , Emanoil Linul  5   6
Affiliations
Review

Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites: Manufacturing, Properties, and Applications

Dipen Kumar Rajak et al. Polymers (Basel). .

Abstract

Composites have been found to be the most promising and discerning material available in this century. Presently, composites reinforced with fibers of synthetic or natural materials are gaining more importance as demands for lightweight materials with high strength for specific applications are growing in the market. Fiber-reinforced polymer composite offers not only high strength to weight ratio, but also reveals exceptional properties such as high durability; stiffness; damping property; flexural strength; and resistance to corrosion, wear, impact, and fire. These wide ranges of diverse features have led composite materials to find applications in mechanical, construction, aerospace, automobile, biomedical, marine, and many other manufacturing industries. Performance of composite materials predominantly depends on their constituent elements and manufacturing techniques, therefore, functional properties of various fibers available worldwide, their classifications, and the manufacturing techniques used to fabricate the composite materials need to be studied in order to figure out the optimized characteristic of the material for the desired application. An overview of a diverse range of fibers, their properties, functionality, classification, and various fiber composite manufacturing techniques is presented to discover the optimized fiber-reinforced composite material for significant applications. Their exceptional performance in the numerous fields of applications have made fiber-reinforced composite materials a promising alternative over solitary metals or alloys.

Keywords: composite materials; fiber-reinforced polymer; natural fibers; synthetic fibers.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Classification of composites.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Classification of fibers, reproduced from [37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53] under open access license.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Hand layup process.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Spray-up process.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Vacuum bag molding process.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Resin transfer molding process.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Vacuum infusion process.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Compression molding process.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Pultrusion process.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Injection molding process.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Electrospinning process.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Filament winding.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Reinforced composite (RC) beams (a), concrete bridge (b), reproduced from [184,185] under open access license.
Figure 14
Figure 14
Pressure vessel made of thermosetting resin and fiberglass reinforcement, reproduced from [204] under open access license.
Figure 15
Figure 15
Flexible link manipulator.
Figure 16
Figure 16
The braking system of corvette made of carbon–ceramic, which saved 4.9895 kg replacing iron, reproduced from [210] under open access license.
Figure 17
Figure 17
Volkswagen xl1 carbon fiber body parts, reproduced from [218] under open access license.
Figure 18
Figure 18
Car interior, reproduced from [224] under open access license.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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