Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
2nd. INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE STUDIES CONGRESS (IGSCONG'22), İstanbul, Türkiye, 8 - 11 Haziran 2022, cilt.1, ss.717-718
Due to environmental concerns
and regulatory constraints, research on lightweight materials has been
prioritized to reduce carbon footprint. New regulations in the vehicle
industry, for example, have made it mandatory to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions to 59 g/km by 2030. Otherwise, the automobile makers will face legal
consequences. On the other hand, a limited vehicle range is one of the most
significant barriers to the automobile industry's move from internal combustion
engines to hybrid and electric cars. Transporting the driver consumes 1% of the
fuel energy utilized by the vehicles. The vehicle's weight uses 67-75 percent
of the remaining fuel energy. As a result, automakers have been investigating
the use of lighter vehicle materials to address the vehicle range issue.
The light-weighting strategy
of the vehicle is the best-known solution to both environmental concerns and
vehicle range limitation problems. In order to reduce the mass of the vehicle,
low-density aluminum, magnesium, and composite materials are used instead of
iron alloys. Today, sandwich composite materials have become essential in
automotive, space, aviation, energy, and construction due to their light
structure and high mechanical strength.
The structure of composite
sandwich materials consists of a light core part and at least one surface layer
that adhered to its core part. The surface layers provide the panel flexural
rigidity and strength. The core part provides the transmission of shear and
axial loads on the surface layers. The core part also contributes to the
bending stiffness, out-of-plane shear, and compressive strength of the panel. The
core geometry of the sandwich can be honeycomb, lattice, corrugated or
cellular. There is a high demand for the using honeycomb core, primarily to
provide minimum material usage, low material cost, and high strength. In
addition, honeycomb cores provide an advantageous feature to the sandwich composite
in terms of mechanical performance in that they support the surface bidirectionally
against the load. Generally, aluminum, polymer, and Nomex are commonly selected
for honeycomb core production. Sandwich composites can be preferred as an
alternative way to reduce material costs in application areas due to their features
of structurally low densities and lightness advantages. Therefore, there is an
increasing interest in selecting new core materials that are lightweight and
cost-effective but with high performance.
With environmental concerns,
legalization of low-emission materials, and increasing consumer awareness of
global warming, there has been a great interest in developing fiber-reinforced
composites in lightweight composite materials. In particular, fiber-reinforced
composites have advantageous properties, such as their high strength/weight
ratio.
Today, the prevention of
waste and the reduction of undesirable effects on the environment is an
important issue that is emphasized within the sustainability approach. The
reuse of waste fibers and by-products resulting from production processes such
as the textile industry contributes to sustainable production. In addition to
environmental benefits, waste fibers used in this way provide specific
mechanical properties (durability and hardness) to the composite for structural
applications. The evaluation of these wastes instead of traditional
reinforcements such as carbon and glass fibers affects the overall performance
of the composites and ensures that more sustainable products are obtained.
Despite many attractive
properties, the full potential of such waste fibers is not fully understood. Therefore,
a thorough understanding of their structure and morphological behavior for
various properties is essential for the use of these reinforcements in
high-performance structural composites.
This research aims to create
a waste fiber-reinforced polymeric core composite material with a
sustainability approach that is comparable to standard composite materials. The
compression molding process was employed in this work to create polymeric
composite material reinforced with waste fibers in a honeycomb core section.
The mechanical performance of the manufactured core material was evaluated.
Keywords: Sustainability, Fiber Reinforced, Polymer Composite, Honeycomb
Core, Lightweight
Acknowledgment: This study was carried out within the project
supported by Bursa Uludağ University BAP Unit (Project Number: FHIZ-2021-525). Among the authors, Mahmut
Sami Torbalı is a scholarship in the TÜBİTAK-BİDEB industrial doctorate program
numbered 119C088, Assist. Prof. Dr. Behiye Kormaz is his Ph.D. supervisor, and Prof.
Dr. Murat YAZICI is the manager of the 119C088 project. Prof. Yazıcı and Torbalı
would like to thank Tübitak and the Project partner organization MEKLAS A.Ş.