
326 Green Composites from Natural Resources
materials. In particular, hemp and ax ber composites have the potential to become
the market leader for environmentally friendly reinforcing material for composites
(Dissanayake et al. 2008).
One major obstacle concerning the development and use of natural ber–
reinforced polymer composites relates to incompatibility between the hydrophilic
natural bers and generally hydrophobic thermoplastic and thermoset matrices.
Synthetic bers such as glass and carbon can be produced with a denite range of
reproducible characteristics, whereas the properties of natural bers vary depend-
ing on the ber diameter, ...