Bast fibers are promising natural materials known for their biodegradability, affordability, and eco-friendliness, making them an alternative to synthetic options. Extensive research has been conducted to examine the effects of integrating various bast fiber reinforcements into epoxy and polystyrene matrices to boost the properties of the composite materials. However, there is limited research on ensete fiber and its utilization as a reinforcement that needs more in-depth research to be used as an alternative bast fiber. This paper aimed to predict and compare the performance of ensete fiber composites with six other bast fiber-reinforced polystyrene and epoxy composites. In this study, flax, hemp, jute, ramie, banana and kenaf were selected bast fibers for comparison purposes. This article employed various micromechanics models and finite element method (FEM), varying the fiber volume fraction. Our findings revealed that hemp fiber-reinforced composites exhibited the best predicted elastic properties, while banana fiber-reinforced composites showed the weakest performance. Notably, composites made with ensete fibers outperformed those made with jute and banana fibers in both epoxy and polystyrene matrices. Comparisons were made between results from the micromechanics models and FEM for all bast fiber-reinforced epoxy and polystyrene composites and there was an agreement between the effective elastic properties and fiber volume fraction (FVF). Further, bast-fiber reinforced epoxy composites showed higher values than polystyrene for strain analysis while for stress analysis, polystyrene composites showed higher stress loads than epoxy composites.

In recent years, nano-filler-based hybrid composites have gained significant attention from the research community; The nano-filler-based hybrid composites can have potential applications in numerous sectors. Nano-fillers are bringing a leading development in material science and natural fibers-based composites. The present study considers the impact of various weight percentages of nano-titanium oxide (NTiO2) fillers (2%, 4%, and 6%) on the elastic features of novel hybridized banana-hemp fiber-reinforced epoxy composites. The proposed composite is analyzed for its elastic properties like longitudinal and transverse elastic modulus, axial Poisson's ratio, and axial shear modulus using homogenized micromechanical models, namely, Mori-Tanaka (M-T) model, Generalized self-consistent (G-SC) model and Modified Halpin-Tsai (M-HTS) model. The composite is modeled using one layer of banana fiber, one layer of NTiO2 and epoxy, and one layer of hemp fiber. All three layers of the composite are arranged in the sequence of banana fiber at 450, a layer of NTiO2 and epoxy at 00, and hemp fiber at 450. The proposed composite's vector sum deformation and strength are examined by employing the ANSYS APDL application. The results obtained in this study are compared with the experimental work mentioned in the literature. The composite reinforced with six weight% NTiO2 has the highest mechanical strength, and the modified Halpin-Tsai (M-HTS) model is the most effective in calculating the elastic features of the proposed composite. In addition to the above, the hybridization effect for the proposed composite is also estimated to analyze the tensile failure strain of banana and hemp fiber in the proposed hybrid composite structure.

The increasing demand for good and improved polymeric composites has led to a surge in the number of researches on hybrid composites, strengthened and enforced with the natural fibres. This paper mainly analyses and presents the attributes of hybrid composites made from natural fibres and carbon nano-tube (CNT) nanoparticles. A novel hybrid composite considered in this research includes kenaf and coir fibres with CNT nanoparticles embedded in an epoxy matrix. The proposed hybrid nanocomposite’s elastic features are calculated by using different analytical models like Chamis, Mori-Tanaka, Nielson elastic models etc and also with the help of Representative Volume Element Analysis (RVE). The content of fibre volume is varied in four different samples and it is found that upon varying the content of fibre volume, the mechanical properties like longitudinal modulus and transverse modulus got affected. The results evaluated from different analytical models are observed to be in good agreement with each other and also with the results of RVE analysis.