Comparative design of E-glass and flax structures based on reliability

Flax fibres are often documented as having equivalent properties to E-glass ones. Based on these comparisons they have been proposed as a suitable replacement for E-glass in structural applications. However, some recent experimental studies demonstrate that flax behaves differently to conventional composites at the structural scale, which indicates that the capabilities of flax need to be better understood at this scale. This paper therefore uses reliability analysis to generate flax structures with an equivalent safety to those in E-glass, accounting for the change in behaviour. An extensive literature review of flax laminate mechanical properties is performed to define their range and variations. These values are used to simulate probabilities of failure which demonstrate that flax structure needs to be 2.4 times heavier than the E-glass structures to have an equivalent safety. It concludes that flax fibres might be used in some applications but cannot replace E-glass in volume constrained structures.