Manufacturing and utilization of novel sustainable composites using pulled wool fibers waste from leather tanneries: Mechanical, physical, and dynamic characterization

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel composite from discarded pulled wool fibers as a sustainable alternative to commercial particleboard and medium density fiberboard (MDF). The investigation aims at designing composites with prominent properties in terms of thermal insulation, water absorption, flexural strength, and dynamic properties. Composites specimens are synthesized from recycled pulled wool fibers at three different densities namely 500, 800, and 1000 kg/m3, with and without fabric skin (core-only and sandwich specimens). Thermal conductivity test shows that core-only specimens with the lowest density (500 kg/m3) has lower thermal conductivity than particleboard and MDF by 30% and 50%, respectively. The sandwich specimens demonstrate 30%, 40%, and 70% less water absorption than MDF and particleboard. The results reveal high potential of pulled wool fibers to produce economic composites with appropriate thermal and physical properties that can be utilized for green buildings envelops. Dynamic tests show that the proposed composites exhibit higher damping values (70% higher in case of core-only specimens) as compared to particleboard and MDF. A main contribution of this work is presenting novel sustainable composites with high damping capacities, which promote their use as light weight structure components in critical applications such as aerospace panels subjected to high dynamic loading conditions.