Plant fibers are being increasingly explored for their use in engineering polymers and composites, and many works have described their properties, especially for flax and hemp fibers. Nevertheless, the availability of plant fibers varies according to the geographical location on the planet. This study presents the first work on the mechanical properties of a tropical fiber extracted from the bast of Cola lepidota (CL) plant. After a debarking step, CL fibers were extracted manually by wet-retting. The tensile properties are first identified experimentally at the fibers scale, and the analysis of the results shows the great influence of the cross-section parameters (diameter, intrinsic porosities) on these properties. Tensile properties of CL fibers are also predicted by the impregnated fiber bundle test (IFBT). At this scale of bundles, a hackling step, which reduces shives and contributes to the parallelization of the fibers within bundles, improves tensile properties predicted by IFBT. The comparison with the properties of plant fibers given in the literature shows that CL fibers have tensile properties in the same range as kenaf, flax or hemp fibers.

This study represents the first works on the manufacture of reinforcements for composite applications such as yarns and fabrics using a tropical fiber extracted from the bast of the Cola Lepidota (CL) plant. Different types of products were produced, including twisted and untwisted yarns and woven and quasi-unidirectional fabrics to manufacture composite samples. At each scale, experimental characterizations of textile and mechanical properties were carried out; these properties are compared to those given in the literature concerning natural fiber materials. The results show that the tenacity of twisted and untwisted CL yarns is higher than that of similar products based on flax fibers, which is an important result for the weaveability of these rovings. At the fabric scale, the quasi-unidirectional architecture reduces waviness and shows promising tensile properties compared to woven fabrics. On the scale of composites, these developments made it possible to achieve properties in tensile comparable, particularly in stiffness, to those achieved by composites based on natural fibers. The objectives of this paper are to highlight the advantages and drawbacks of different types of reinforcements, and to present the first characterization of the properties of products based on CL fibers.