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Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue on ‘Sustainable Natural Materials for Engineering Application’ addresses the latest progress in the science and technology of natural material application, since they have attracted growing attention in recent years in both the industrial and academic sectors. Their growing relevance in the modern industry and science results from the main global trends in industrial development, but also from environmental thinking and nature protection activities, including energy-saving solutions and clean technologies. This Special Issue of Materials focuses on all aspects of current scientific and technological progress related to the manufacturing of natural materials and products. Topics of interest include mechanical and structural properties of composites as well as their constituent materials; experimental and theoretical studies relating to composites; manipulation of properties through manufacturing and processing; modeling and simulations; microscopic to macroscopic behavior; and performance verification techniques. I deeply believe the collection will become an origin of new ideas for the design, research, and use of sustainable natural materials for engineering application.

Dr. Antonios Papadopoulos
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 2690 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Strength Characteristics and Microstructure of Cement Stabilized Soft Soil Admixed with Silica Fume

by Nan Jiang, Changming Wang, Zeping Wang, Bailong Li and Yi-ao Liu

Materials 2021, 14(8), 1929; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ma14081929 - 12 Apr 2021

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 2388

Abstract

Soft soil improvement is an important subject in civil engineering, and searching for an effective admixture is an important research. Silica fume (SF) is a kind of recycled material, it can be used in engineering as a pozzolanic material. The main objective of this study is to assess the effectiveness of industrial waste silica fume (SF) as an admixture to improve the cement stabilized soft soil. The unconfined compressive test (UCT) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) test of cement stabilized soil with different SF contents and different curing times have been carried out. UCT after 28 days revealed that the addition of SF can effectively increase the strength of cement stabilized soil and reduce the amount of cement, and 1.5% SF content is considered optimum, excessive SF will not further increase the strength. SF helped to accelerate the cement hydration reaction and significantly improve the early-age strength of stabilized soil even at 3 days, which can improve construction efficiency in actual projects. SEM analyses shows that the proper SF content could make the hydration product calcium silicate hydrate gel (CSH) fill the pores and increase the strength of the material, but excessive SF will increase the large pores content of the material and reduce the strength. This provided a basis for application of SF in improving soft soil. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Natural Materials for Engineering Application)

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17 pages, 12055 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Natural Fibres as a Sustainable Reinforcement Constituent in Aligned Discontinuous Polymer Composites Produced by the HiPerDiF Method

by Ali Kandemir, Marco L. Longana, Tulio H. Panzera, Gilberto G. del Pino, Ian Hamerton and Stephen J. Eichhorn

Materials 2021, 14(8), 1885; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ma14081885 - 10 Apr 2021

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2329

Abstract

Sustainable fibre reinforced polymer composites have drawn significant attention in many industrial sectors as a means for overcoming issues with end-of-life regulations and other environmental concerns. Plant based natural fibres are considered to be the most suitable reinforcement for sustainable composites since they are typically from renewable resources, are cheap, and are biodegradable. In this study, a number of plant based natural fibres-curaua, flax, and jute fibres-are used to reinforce epoxy, poly(lactic acid) (PLA), and polypropylene (PP) matrices to form aligned discontinuous natural fibre reinforced composites (ADNFRC). The novel HiPerDiF (high performance discontinuous fibre) method is used to produce high performance ADNFRC. The tensile mechanical, fracture, and physical (density, porosity, water absorption, and fibre volume fraction) properties of these composites are reported. In terms of stiffness, epoxy and PP ADNFRC exhibit similar properties, but epoxy ADNFRC shows increased strength compared to PP ADNFRC. It was found that PLA ADNFRC had the poorest mechanical performance of the composites tested, due principally to the limits of the polymer matrix. Moreover, curaua, flax (French origin), and jute fibres are found to be promising reinforcements owing to their mechanical performance in epoxy and PP ADNFRC. However, only flax fibre with desirable fibre length is considered to be the best reinforcement constituent for future sustainable ADNFRC studies in terms of mechanical performance and current availability on the market, particularly for the UK and EU. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Natural Materials for Engineering Application)

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