Fabrication and tensile behavior of post-consumer carpet waste structural composite

Abstract

India is most populated country and stands on second position after China and most of the people utilized carpet regularly. Carpet is generally utilized by every household and mostly used in institutions, decorations, parties, etc. for flooring purpose. Carpet remains in good condition for maximum one or two years after which they deteriorate and becomes waste. This huge quantity of post-consumer carpet waste is thrown into landfill sites creating severe health problems, air pollution etc. In order to reduce the rise of this landfill sites we need adopt major some steps towards recycling of such waste, and thus save environment from waste deposition. Therefore in this study an effort has been done to fabricate low strength structural composite by Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM) process. The tensile behavior of prepared composite has been determined by computerized universal testing machine (UTM). The composite has been fabricated in two different ways by joining either the two fiber surfaces or two back surfaces together with the help of epoxy. The results shows that composite fabricated by joining the two fibers surfaces has higher strength and the obtained results also indicate that the fabricated composites can be conveniently used as structural composites for light weight application.