VOL. 10, NO. 15, AUGUST 2015 ISSN 1819-6608 ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences © 2006-2015 Asian Research Publishing Network (ARPN). All rights reserved. www.arpnjournals.com 6279 THE NATURAL FIBER COMPOSITES BASED ON BAMBOO FIBERS: A REVIEW S. A. H. Roslan 1 , Z. A. Rasid 2 and M. Z. Hassan 3 1,2 Department of Mechanical Precision Engineering, Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Razak School of Advanced Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia E-Mail: amnihusna90@gmail.com ABSTRACT Bamboo has found numerous applications in human life for centuries. In recent years however, bamboo has generated interest from researchers as a candidate to replace environmental unfriendly glass as fiber in fiber reinforced composites. This is due to the potential properties of bamboo that has high specific strength and stiffness besides being biodegradable, sustainable and renewable. This paper is to review on the properties of bamboo reinforced composites from numerous characterization studies of bamboo that are available in the literatures. The review is based on characterization studies on several types of bamboo reinforced composites such as laminated bamboo fiber reinforced composite, randomly oriented bamboo reinforced composite, hybrid fiber reinforced composite, bamboo fiber reinforced bio-composite and bamboo fiber sandwiched structure composite. It can be said that the laminated bamboo composite in general gives higher mechanical properties compare to other structural forms of bamboo composite. Even though bamboo bio-composite in general provides low mechanical properties, the properly design unidirectional bamboo bio-composite can also have high mechanical properties that are as good as the laminated bamboo reinforced composite. While specific tensile properties of laminated bamboo reinforced composite are at par with glass fiber reinforced composite, the mechanical properties of bamboo fiber reinforced composite are comparable to the mechanical properties of the best among natural fiber reinforced composites. Keywords: natural fiber, bamboo fiber, biodegradable material, bamboo fiber reinforced composite, bamboo fiber reinforced sandwich structure, bio-composite. INTRODUCTION The application of natural fibers such as kenaf, jute, bamboo, flax and wood in fiber reinforced composites has become so important of late due to their high effective strength and stiffness, low cost, low production energy requirement, abundantly available and attractive environmental advantages of being renewable, biodegradable and sustainable compared to synthetic fibers such as glass and carbon [1-6]. The increased application of these natural fibers in such composites in industries such as automotive [7-9], marine [10] and construction [11-13] is a proof to this claim. Bamboo as compared to woods has overall mechanical properties that are comparable to those of woods while having advantages of lower weight and short harvesting time of 3-4 years counting from the time of plantation [14]. Furthermore, bamboo does not require re-planting as the extensive root base sprouts new shoots readily and these trees such as shown in Figure-1 [15] are abundantly available especially in Asia and South America. Compare to other natural fibers, bamboo fibers has a specialty of high strength and low density making it at par with glass in term of specific strength [14,16] while the specific strength of bamboo is 3 to 4 times to the specific strength of mild steel [16]. With these advantages, it is not a surprise that in term of production of fiber source, bamboo is one of the highest at 30 million ton per year [17]. The high strength of bamboo in fiber direction is due to the longitudinally alignment of its fiber to its body while at the same time this is attributed by its polylamelate wall structure that consists of alternating broad and narrow layers with different fibrillary orientation such as shown in Figure-2 [18]. Furthermore, high cellulose and lignin content and relatively small micro-fibril angle of bamboo plant contribute to this high strength of bamboo fiber [18]. As such bamboo fiber is also known as the natural glass fiber [19]. Figure-1. Bamboo trees in China [15]. Natural fiber such as bamboo fiber also comes with a disadvantage of having high water intake due to the presence of hydroxyl and other polar groups in various constituents of natural fibers. This leads to weak interfacial bonding between fibers and matrix that is usually relatively more hydrophobic. The wetting of the fiber within matrix will also be affected and consequently, the mechanical properties of the bamboo composite are