Characteristic study of bamboo fibers in preforming

The bamboo fiber preforming is an important process in the liquid composite molding for fabricating fiber reinforced composites with non-planar geometric shapes. This study investigated the deformation and spring back behaviors of the single bamboo fiber and bamboo fiber mat under a simple bending preforming test. The effects of the heating temperature and moisture content of bamboo fibers were studied during the tests. The result showed that the [0/90] bamboo fiber mats could be perfectly preformed without spring back after bending under the conditions of a wet and high temperature conditions. The internal structure of bamboo fiber with moisture tends to expand and soften, which makes the fibers to deform plastically under external stresses. The single bamboo fiber preforming test and stress relaxation test were conducted to study its formability. Higher heating temperature and moisture content for the bamboo fibers during preforming process can reduce the spring back effect after preforming.