Mechanical and Impact Properties of Packaging-Waste/E-Glass/Epoxy Sandwich Composites for Construction Applications

Abstract

Using textile structural composites improves day by day in various industries due to their high specific strength and modulus, good fatigue and corrosion resistance. The most important reasons for the increased use of textile structural composites are the increased expectations for product performance and demand for lightweight materials in global markets. Rapid economic growth, urbanization, rising in population and welfare level lead to an increased amount of waste production. In Turkey, the annual average of solid waste is 25 million tons and 20% of this waste consists of packaging waste. In this study, a new sandwich material was developed for construction applications with low cost and high performance by using box wastes as core and E-Glass woven fabric as sheet materials. The mechanical properties were investigated by 3-point bending test and their impact behavior was compared after low-velocity impact tests in different energy levels. The core material had a negligible bending strength. The bending load of sandwich composites was dramatically higher than those of face material. Low-velocity impact results showed that absorbed energy and damaged area increased with increasing impact energy level. It could be concluded that the developed sandwich composites absorb more energy with small damaged areas and therefore can be considered as damage resistant materials for constructional applications as door and siding. The thermal insulation properties of these new sandwich composites will be also investigated in future researches.