Development of a pre-industrial process to produce an unidirectional bamboo fibre tape to be used in high end composite applications.

An innovative extraction method and a further cleaning/alignment process for bamboo fibres, proven on lab-scale prototype machines, have been invented at KU Leuven. These processes were designed not only to provide continuous production of long well aligned fibres with excellent mechanical properties, but also, with mechanical principles that can be scaled-up for future industrial production. As a further step, the aim of this project is to develop a pre-industrial process to produce an unidirectional bamboo fibre “tape” offered as a pre-form or pre-impregnated material (“prepreg”), ready to be used in the composite industry for high-tech applications. For this purpose, newly conceptualized lab scale equipment will have to perform two operations: unidirectional fibre overlapping and prepregging. Also, the developed process will have to be integrated with the current extraction/cleaning in line processes.