Bamboo fibers demonstrate enormous potential as the reinforcement phase in composite materials. In this study, in order to find suitable NaOH concentration for bamboo fiber treatment, bamboo fibers were treated with 2 wt.%, 6 wt.% and 10 wt.% NaOH solutions for 12 h, respectively. We determined that 6 wt.% NaOH treated bamboo fibers were optimal for the fabrication of bamboo fiber composites by single fiber tensile test, single fiber pull-out test, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The short length bamboo fibers treated with 6 wt.% NaOH solutions were well dispersed in the epoxy matrix by a new preparation method. The effect of fiber content and fiber length on the mechanical behavior of bamboo fiber reinforced epoxy composites was investigated. The results confirmed that fracture toughness and flexural modulus of the composites monotonically increased with fiber length and content. However, for all samples, composites showed negligible difference on the flexural strength. The fracture surfaces of the composites were observed by SEM, revealing that fiber breakage, matrix cracking, debonding, and fiber pull out were major failure types. In addition, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was carried out to investigate the thermal behavior of both bamboo fibers and composites.
Keywords: alkali treated bamboo fiber; fiber-matrix composites (FMCs); mechanical properties; thermal properties.