Sustainable sandwich structures made from bottle caps core and aluminium skins: A statistical approach

Abstract

This work further investigates the manufacture and characterisation of a sustainable sandwich panel made from aluminium skins and a recycled thermoplastic bottle cap core, an innovative concept proposed in a previous paper. A full factorial design based on Design of Experiments (DoE) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) techniques has highlighted the complex influence of three manufacturing parameters (type of polymeric adhesive, adhesive layer thickness layer and core packing topology) on the absolute and specific physical and flexural properties of the panels. The ANOVA revealed that the use of higher amount of epoxy polymer led to enhanced panel strength and stiffness. The cell packing topology, however, did not provide a significant effect on most panel properties. Discarded bottle caps have proven to be a promising lightweight and inexpensive honeycomb component for structural applications.