This study examined both the use of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) as a plastic matrix for wood-plastic composites (WPCs) and the effect of impact modification on the mechanical properties of ABS/wood-flour composites. Blends of ABS filled with wood flour (both pine and maple) were processed into profile shape using a conical twin-screw extruder and the mechanical properties of the resulting composites were characterised and compared to WPCs made with polyolefins (HDPE and PP) and rigid PVC matrices. Generally, WPCs made with ABS matrix outperformed their polyolefin counterparts in both flexural strength and modulus, whereas ABS-based composites had inferior strength but greater modulus than those made with rigid PVC. The impact strength of ABS/wood-flour composites was below that of wood plastic composites made with polyolefins. However, impact modification with acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene terpolymers had some effect in toughening of the ABS/wood-flour composites.
Thin-walled tubes are widely used as energy absorbers due to their high crashworthiness performance. This study aims to evaluate the effect of plastic forming history carried out for thickness optimization on crashworthiness performance of thin-walled square tube (TWST). Within the scope of the study, a series of numerical analyses were conducted for the TWST using a commercial finite element (FE) software. In order to determine individual effect of optimization, FG thickness of TWST was first obtained using LS-OPT software. Later, thickness gradient was achieved by performing rolling process to consider individual plastic forming effect Afterwards, deep drawing process was carried out to shape TWST by considering springback and trimming effects. Finally, crash responses were obtained under axial high velocity impact loading to determine the coupled effect of optimization and plastic forming on the crashworthiness performance of the TWST. It was determined that the coupled effect, which takes plastic forming and optimization effects into account, reduced the peak crush force of the TWST by 24% and increased the absorbed energy value by 39%. The results obtained from this study showed that coupled effect of optimization and plastic forming processes has significant effect on the crashworthiness performance of the TWST and otherwise either overestimated or underestimated results are obtained.
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