17th International Fiber and Polymer Research Symposium

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Development of recycled lightweight fiber reinforced polymeric composite parts by using manufacturing waste glass fibers and PET powder materials

Authors :

Gülnur Başer¹ Rümeysa Zeynep Kabaca²

1- METYX COMPOSITES 2- Marmara University Faculty of Technology, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Turkey

Keywords :

PET foam،Sandwich composites،Recycled composite،Glass fiber waste،Recycled core

Abstract :

In this study, the structural performance of recycled PET foams that were developed as a core material from PET wastes from core-kit manufacturing process is studied. Compression molding under heat method was used to manufacture recycled PET cores by using waste PET foam powders. Unsaturated polyester resin was used as a binder to collect and bond PET powders to get a compact form. Binder was mixed with waste PET powder and the blend was compressed under the heat with a pressure in a mold. The various powder/binder mixing ratios as 50/50, 60/40, 78/22 were used to see effect of mixing ratio on density and flexural strength. Moreover, waste short glass fibers were added to mixture to increase strength of core material. The results reveal that flexural strength and density decreases with the increasing of powder content in mixing. In addition, it is noticed that sandwich composite structure prepared with recycled cores shows better bending and shear properties than those of sandwich composites prepared with virgin foam core materials. The results presented here may serve as utilization of foam core wastes from core-kit manufacturing process by recycling via compression molding applications.