Abstract
The primary aim of this research is to develop thermoset composites reinforced with cotton fibres extracted from textile waste. These composites are mainly targeted to replace timber in its application for furniture items and in some visible and non-visible automotive components. The pre-consumer cotton textile wastes such as cutting waste, in garment manufacturing, and defective fabrics were converted into the fibrous form called ‘shoddy’, using rag-tearing technique. The fibrous web of shoddy was produced using the carding machine. This web was used for developing thermoset composites as a reinforcement material. The thermoset composites with four different fibre volume fraction values, namely 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 were developed using compression moulding technique. The developed composites were characterised by mechanical properties, dynamic mechanical properties, thermal degradation behaviour and water absorption behaviour. The mechanical properties of the composites were found comparable with that of commercial wood. These composites can be used to develop a dashboard panel. The composites developed in this research have shown low water diffusion coefficient values as compared with pine, oak and linden wood.
Highlights
Textile waste–reinforced composites are gaining more attention in recent times
Pre-consumer cotton textile wastes such as cutting waste in garment making and defective fabrics were collected from the textile industry
200 r/min cylinder speed was chosen to produce carded web to study the mechanical properties of composites by varying fibre volume fraction
Summary
The waste cotton fibre- or fabric-reinforced thermoset and thermoplastic composites have been reported. The global volume share of cotton was 31% in 2015 and 25.4% in 2016.1,2 the increasing demand for cotton textiles and the simultaneous increase in the quantity of waste makes the world to think about recycling waste textiles.[3] The waste textiles can be successfully employed to develop composite boards for applications like furniture materials, subflooring, roofing materials, support for outdoor signs, automotive components and so on.[4,5,6]. Umar et al.[7] reported two different types of woven fabrics as reinforcement for thermoset composites. The reinforcement materials consist of cotton yarn, used as warp, and the yarn produced from comber noil and knitting waste, used as weft.
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