Investigation of Mechanical Properties for Unsaturated Polyester-Based Fibre Glass Composites Filled by Recycled Milled Composites

Abstract

The present study discusses the mechanical properties of a composite material consisting of polyester resin reinforced by random mat glass fiber and milled of (scraped material) waste of glass-reinforced pipe (GRP). The current work uses the finite element method based on ANSYS program as a tool for evaluating the performance of the design proposal for the car roof. The milled wasted glass fiber composite has showed a good and acceptable young modulus, maximum stress, and yield strength compared with the random mat composite. The agreement of the suggested material comes from the experimental and theoretical results for some of the laboratory tests. The divergence between results of random mat glass fiber and milled waste glass fiber do not exceed the percentages errors that are obtained during experimental work, which are 3.98% and 5.26% for tensile strength and strain until failure in the tensile test, 4.5% and 3.6% for flexural strength and strain in bending test and 12.32% and 1.27% for strain energy and deformation in the impact test, respectively. The result of the numerical solution was compatible with the experimental results. The result extracted from this study proved that the milled of waste of glass fiber composite is an acceptable reinforcement material with economic and environmental benefits.