Impact of hydration on the mechanical properties and damage mechanisms of natural silk fibre reinforced composites

Silk fibres exhibit good biodegradability, biocompatibility and balanced strength and toughness, which are useful for toughness/impact-critical composites in the biomedical field. However, the impact of hydration has not been studied for silk fibre-reinforced polymers (SFRPs). In this work, SFRPs fabricated vacuum-assisted resin infusion (VARI) were treated under three hydration conditions. A hydration condition of 40 °C at 89% relative humidity...