Mechanical Behaviour of Sandwich Beams Manufactured with Glass or Jute Fiber in Facings and Cork Agglomerates as Core

Abstract

The environment is a prominent issue today. Designing environmentally sustainable products is an attempt to address this question. In many cases, natural materials are environmentally friendly for product design manufacturing. The goal of this work is to study the mechanical behaviour of NL10 and NL30 cork agglomerates. Compression, shear and bending tests in sandwich specimens made of glass or jute fiber in facings and cork agglomerates as core were carried out. The sandwich specimens were manufactured by Resin Transfer Moulding (RTM) process. Results show that NL30 has a higher compression strength and shear resistance than NL10 agglomerate due to its manufacturing process, which originates superior density, but the NL30 agglomerate superior density is undesirable. Sandwich test specimens that presented failure by rupture of the core in both types of tests, core shear tests and three point bending tests, showed that the failure is mainly adhesive occurring between the adhesively joined cork grains. Since grains are unaffected and remain intact, it is possible to improve these materials by using better agglutinants and new bonding techniques with the intent of getting cork agglomerates with higher shear and flexural strength.