The Use of Pineapple Fiber Composites for Automotive Applications: A Short Review

Abstract

Pineapple leaf fibers (PALF), as the part of a large productive system, based on the availability of fruits for the food industry, offer a large amount of possibilities in term of use of the fibers, which are almost exclusively dedicated to the field of materials, as the reinforcement of polymer matrices, either traditional oil-based ones or biodegradable ones. Pineapple fibers, due to their suitability to textile use, can be introduced into composites not only in the form of short fiber, although the latter remains the most frequent case. As the consequence of this, they are also of interest of the automotive industry, an interest, which is steadily and rapidly growing especially in the last few years. This review tries to elucidate what are the characteristics of pineapple fibers that are particularly important for the automotive industry together with trying to clarify which could be the possibilities in the next future for their wider introduction in this sector.