TY - JOUR A1 - Obermeier, Frederik A1 - Karlinger, Peter A1 - Schemme, Michael A1 - Altstädt, Volker T1 - Thermoplastic Hybrid Composites with Wood Fibers: Bond Strength of Back-Injected Structures JF - Materials N2 - Due to their lightweight potential and good eco-balance, thermoplastic hybrid composites with natural fiber reinforcement have long been used in the automotive industry. A good alternative to natural fibers is wood fibers, which have similar properties but are also a single-material solution using domestic raw materials. However, there has been hardly any research into wood fibers in thermoplastic back-injected hybrid composites. This article compares the bond strength of an injection molded rib from polypropylene (PP) and wood fibers to different non-wovens. The non-wovens consisted of wood fibers (spruce) or alternatively natural fibers (kenaf, hemp), both with a polypropylene matrix. Pull-off and instrumented puncture impact tests show that, given similar parameters, the natural and wood-fiber-hybrid composites exhibit very similar trends in bond strength. Further tests using viscosity measurements, microscopy, and computed tomography confirm the results. Wood-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic hybrid composites can thus compete with the natural fiber composites in terms of their mechanical behavior and therefore present a good alternative in technical semi-structural applications. KW - biocomposites KW - wood fibers KW - polypropylene KW - back-injection molding KW - bond strength Y1 - 2022 UR - https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15072473 VL - 15 IS - 7 SP - 2473 ER -