Experimental investigation on impact, sound, and vibration response of natural-based composite sandwich made of flax and agglomerated cork

Abstract

In recent years, material scientists have been focusing on the utilization of materials from natural resources due to environmental concerns. In the same context, the aim of this work is to evaluate impact response, sound absorption behavior, and vibration damping characteristics of natural-based composite sandwich made of flax as skin reinforcement and agglomerated cork as core. Vacuum bagging method was used for manufacturing composite sandwiches with different cork densities of 240, 280, and 340 kg/m3. Composite sandwiches have also been manufactured by using glass as skin reinforcement for comparison. Low velocity impact test was conducted and found that glass fiber reinforced composite sandwich required 73–77% more energy to perforate when compared to the flax fiber reinforced composite sandwich irrespective of core density. Flax fiber reinforced composite sandwich has 45–96% higher sound absorption capacity and 27–32% higher vibration damping ratio than glass fiber reinforced composite sandwich irrespective of core density. This is due to multiscale structure and cellular nature of the flax fiber and the cork materials, respectively. These enhancements in sound and vibration are accomplished with just little forfeits in perforation energy. This study recommends that, if optimized, the natural-based composite sandwich could be an ecologically appealing answer for automobile and construction applications, where impact behavior is important, along with sound and vibration properties.

Panels of eco-friendly materials for architectural acoustics

“…Other applications are in the field of acoustics for the automobile industry. 25,26 The materials reinforced with natural fibres have certain advantages compared to the traditional ones because they come from renewable resources, they are largely available, light and are not harmful in their processing. In addition, the reinforcements do not produce irritations or other effects on safety and health during management.…”

Knowledge technologies based on fabrication process composite materials and remote sensing applications

“…[1][2][3][4] Furthermore, the extraction and observation of the water body from the remote sensing data lead to easily and correctly determine various water resources monitoring, management, wetland classification, water/land cover segmentation, and coastline of lake detection. [5][6][7][8] This work aims to determine the Mosul Dam reservoir water case and monitor the quality of water and its impact on human health due to environmental and climatic changes that had occurred in recent years, which caused decline of water quantity and increase in pollution and sedimentation, which has been tested over a 31-year period. Thus, using temporal remote sensing data is the best choice for this work to observe the changing over the mentioned period.…”

A Novel Acoustic Sandwich Panel Based on Sheep Wool

“…Regarding the use of the materials, sandwich panels may be natural, hybrid, or fully synthetic. There are several studies reported in the literature about natural and hybrid sandwich structures, constructed with various materials, but only a few of these assess the sandwich panel's acoustic properties [10][11][12][13]. The majority of them focuses on mechanical strength.…”

“…These structures are mainly used in engineering, automotive, and aeronautical applications. The skins are mainly produced from hardwood plates [14], veneer [15], flax fibers-epoxy resin composite [10,12], bamboo, and cotton bound with a vinyl ester matrix [11], natural silk fiber and epoxy resin [16], glass fiber mat [17,18], aluminum sheets [19,20], and carbon fiber-epoxy resin composite [13]. Similarly, the core of the structures could be prepared from mushroom foam [14], agglomerated cork [10,13], balsa wood [11,12], pine wood [11], medium density fiberboard [20], a textile fibers-bone glue composite [15], natural fibers (palm leaf, coconut, raffia, oil palm) and polyester resin [17], natural fibers (jute and hemp) and epoxy resin [18,19], and synthetic foams [16].…”

“…Similarly, the core of the structures could be prepared from mushroom foam [14], agglomerated cork [10,13], balsa wood [11,12], pine wood [11], medium density fiberboard [20], a textile fibers-bone glue composite [15], natural fibers (palm leaf, coconut, raffia, oil palm) and polyester resin [17], natural fibers (jute and hemp) and epoxy resin [18,19], and synthetic foams [16]. The manufacturing method of these sandwich structures also varies from gluing the elements together [14], using a vacuum-assisted resin transfer method [10,18], gluing and vacuuming [11,13], gluing and pressing [19], and hot pressing [12], to using the resin employed for the core [15,17] or using the resin employed for the skin and pressing [16].In the field of construction materials, the sandwich or multi-layered structures are commonly used as wall panels. Brenci et al [21] designed several multi-layered wall structures consisting of different core materials, such as wood shavings, recycled acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), and rock wool as well as different face plates such as oriented strand board and gypsum board.…”