Considerations on the incremental forming of natural fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites

Considerations on the incremental forming of natural fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites

Antonio Formisano, Luca Boccarusso, Dario De Fazio, Giuseppe Irace, Massimo Durante

Abstract. Incremental sheet forming, originally developed as an excellent alternative to other material forming procedures for incrementally deforming flat metal sheets into complex three-dimensional profiles, has recently been extended to polymers and composites. This work presents an experimental study on the incremental forming of natural fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites. Natural fibres for polymer reinforcement are gaining increased attention as fillers and competitive reinforcement materials. Cone frusta with fixed wall angles were manufactured to investigate the formability of composite sheets made from polypropylene reinforced with hemp and flax long fibre fabrics. Failures and defects were observed, and the forming forces during the process were monitored to draw conclusions on the feasibility of incremental forming applied to these composite materials.

Keywords
Incremental Sheet Forming, Polypropylene, Natural Fibres

Published online 5/7/2025, 8 pages
Copyright © 2025 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA

Citation: Antonio Formisano, Luca Boccarusso, Dario De Fazio, Giuseppe Irace, Massimo Durante, Considerations on the incremental forming of natural fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 54, pp 2238-2245, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644903599-241

The article was published as article 241 of the book Material Forming

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

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