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Q1. What was the purpose of the paper?

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Comment: To assess whether ozone treatment of aramid fabrics could make their surface more hydrophilic (higher surface energy). If so - this would facilitate the interfacial strength of aramid based fibre reinforced composites.

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Q2. Judging from the abstract – did they succeed with what they set out to do?

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Comment: It is hard to tell from the abstract.

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Q3. Why are the mechanical property alterations of the fibres, yarns and fabrics discussed in the abstract? How do they relate to the primary research question?

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Comment: Mechanical properties are what you put at risk with their ozone treatment. Since that is what aramid fibres are used for it is essential not to jeopardize them. However, they are in no way related to the primary research question.

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Q4. What is your opinion about Scanning Electron Microscopy as a qualitative and quantitative tool for surface morphological analysis?

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Comment: It takes significant ethical integrity to use SEM as a research tool since you may select whatever observations that strengthens your hypothesis. The authors showed high ethical standards.

In this case the oxidation would probably have to reach an advanced stage for SEM to reveal any visible effects on the surface of the fibres. Consider the resolution of the images, which is in the order of 1 μm while an oxygen atom is below 1 nm.

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Q5. What is their point of using wetting?

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Comment: They use it as a means to monitor increasing hydrophilicity that should come with gradual surface oxidation from the ozone.

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Q6. In the abstract and conclusions the authors claim to have found significant mechanical improvements of the aramid yarns (filament bundles) in terms of higher tenacity and elongation with ozone treatment. Do you a) agree about both these observations, b) also think they are significant, in statistical terms and c) have an opinion about the scatter of elongation (at break?) for the yarns accounted for in Table 3?

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Comment: a) the tenacity increased but the elongation actually dropped, b) there is no statistical analysis to back these statements up and c) the scatter is huge and there is no consistency with the ozone treatment time.

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Q7. Do you have an idea why the ball burst strength data shown in Figure 5 seem to gain from ozone treatment?

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Comment: Potentially from the increased coefficient of friction that may come with the oxidation that according to the wicking data in Fig 3 seem to be real.

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Q8. What do you think of the way they relate their results with results from literature on similar attempts to modify the surfaces of reinforcement fibres for composites?

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Comment: Even if they have several references that seem highly relevant there is no such attempt to reflect on them. Discussion and self-reflection is totally missing.

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Q9. What additional testing would you suggest?

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Comment: That the authors aim for the key question. Does the treatment improve the fibre-matrix adhesion strength in a composite? This may for instance be done by embedding single fibres in a ductile matrix and study at what lengths the fibres break at.

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This resource was developed as part of an Erasmus+ project, funded with support from the European Commission under grant agreement 2016-1-SE01-KA203-22064.

The project was a collaboration between:

The University of Borås, Sweden
The University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland
The University of Alcalá, Spain
Digital Connections, Scotland

This resource has been released under Creative Commons license CC-BY-SA 4.0.

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Academic content – The University of Boras (www.hb.se)
Technical resource development – The University of the Highlands and Islands Educational Development Unit - EDU (edu@uhi.ac.uk)

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Textiles Engineering: Scientific Communication

Journal paper