LOP_hemp

Agro – biomass as an industrial raw material, especially as residual and waste material, represents an opportunity as a substitute material for many critical raw materials, but brings with it the challenge that as a grown raw material it has a much wider range of material properties and parameters; the resulting variance is difficult to handle for a society that is used to optimally adjusted oil-based materials.

The LOP_hemp (low processed hemp) project uses a broad-based series of tests to determine the relevant parameters in the hempbastfibers as reinforcing fibers in natural fiber-reinforced composites, from cultivation to processing into industrial semi-finished products. Hempbastfiber loses up to 60% of its performance during the manufacturing process up to the semi-finished product. While bending moduli of elasticity of up to 46 GPA can be achieved with hemp fibre-reinforced composite test specimens on a laboratory scale, the industrial semi-finished products currently available only achieve 25 GPA. The aim of this project is to determine the relevance of the individual parameters in connection with maintaining fibre quality in order to subsequently work with optimised process chains and bring the fibre into the component as undamaged as possible.

The method for generating data is based on a broad 3-point bending test series, using 8mm round bars to generate a data set consisting of bending modulus and strength.