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The continuous demands for reducing environmental impact and energy consumption are the major driving factors for the development of natural fiber (NF)-reinforced composites (NFRCs). The huge demand for sustainable materials in industries leads to the usage of NFs in product developments. These NFs are more attractive due to their lightweight, cost-effectiveness, ease of availability, and environmentally friendly aspects. Green composites are the best alternatives in place of petroleum-based composites which meet the current industrial requirements. In recent years, researchers are more focused on the development of NF composites as a potential candidate in real-life applications due to economic advantages. This review gives a brief overview of NFs introduction, types, economic aspects, and the recent developments in NFRCs with an analysis of mechanical, thermal, and dielectric properties. Moreover, the water absorption behavior, applications, and challenges in using NFs are also studied in this review. Additionally, this review will motivate the researchers for further developments and exist as foundation literature for upcoming researchers.

The main challenging things in railway vehicles are to reduce the consumption of energy for transportation and to decrease the emission of harmful gasses by limiting the consumption of fuel sources. These drawbacks can be overcome by lightweight structures designed for the vehicle bodies and frameworks. The composite materials with fiber reinforcements are the preferred choice for manufacturing lightweight structures to reduce the overall weight of the rail vehicle. The fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) materials possess light‐weightiness, high strength, high stiffness value and are more durable in nature. The researchers are continuously putting their efforts into new innovations in concern towards the replacement of existing conventional materials by FRP composites in railway applications. This review focuses on the overview of FRP composites, the role of composites in past rail vehicles, the rail vehicle component selection and methodology and FRP composites used for various railway components manufacturing with their challenges. Also, this review included the data of FRP composites used in various countries for different railway components applications. Hence, this review is beneficial for the upcoming researchers as a foundation literature to work on railway vehicle applications using variety of FRP materials. Moreover, the challenges are quoted in this review through the comprehensive analysis of literature and hence it provides the information in the form of research gap, so that it would be helpful for the researchers to overcome all the challenges in their upcoming research works.

Designing new eco-friendly fibers enable the creation of an alternative resource for many applications, specifically within the field of polymeric composites. This paper details the fabrication of hybrid epoxy composites comprising natural fiber, Phoenix Pusilla plant dry leaves which belong to the family of date palm and nanofillers made from the fish bones, which has been explored for the first time. ASTM standards provided the guidelines for the preparation of samples and mechanical measurements. The mechanical properties of the pure carbon fiber composites were compared with that of the hybrid composites containing carbon fiber, natural fiber and nanofiller. The results validate the potential of hybrid composites containing novel fibers. Adding the bio-nanofillers in hybrid polymer composites permits the enhancement of the tensile strength, flexural strength, and hardness by 22.5%, 200%, 100% and 15.2% respectively.