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Sandwich Structures Made of Discarded Bottle Caps Core and Hybrid Glass Fibre Composite Skins

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Abstract

This work investigates a novel concept of sandwich panel composed of discarded polypropylene (PP) bottle caps as circular honeycomb core and skins made with a hybrid glass fibre/silica composite. A full factorial design (DoE) is carried out to identify the effects of the core packing system and the inclusion of silica particles in the composite skins, on the flexural properties of the sandwich panels. Finite element analysis validated by the experimental results is used to investigate and predict the failure mechanisms of these sandwich structures. The DoE reveals that the hexagonal packing of PP bottle caps with the presence of silica in both skins lead to increased mechanical properties, such as core shear stress (0.79 MPa), facing stress (42.56 MPa) and flexural modulus (1589.21 MPa), especially when compared to the orthotropic packing with silica only on the bottom skin which obtained a lower performance of 21.01%, 11.41% and 17.22% for core shear stress, facing stress and flexural modulus, respectively. The findings reveal an alternative upcycling route for discarded polypropylene caps.

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The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings cannot be shared at this time as the data also forms part of an ongoing study.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Brazilian Research Agencies, CAPES (MSc scholarship), CNPq (PQ—309885/2019-1) and FAPEMIG (PPM-IX) for the financial support provided.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Innovation and Technology in Composite Materials – CITeC, Federal University of São João del Rei – UFSJ, Praça Frei Orlando, centro, São João del Rei, Minas Gerais, 36307352, Brazil

    Lucas Braga Lopes Gato, Sergio Luiz Moni Ribeiro Filho, Túlio Hallak Panzera & Maikson Luiz Passaia Tonatto

  2. Group on Mechanics of Materials and Structures – GMEC, Cachoeira Do Sul Campus, Federal University of Santa Maria - UFSM, Bairro Passo D’Areia, Brazil

    Maikson Luiz Passaia Tonatto

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, Federal University of São Carlos - UFSCar, São Carlos, SP, Brazil

    André Luis Christoforo

  4. Bristol Composites Institute (ACCIS), University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TR, UK

    Fabrizio Scarpa

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  1. Lucas Braga Lopes Gato
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  2. Sergio Luiz Moni Ribeiro Filho
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  3. Túlio Hallak Panzera
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Correspondence to Túlio Hallak Panzera.

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Gato, L.B.L., Ribeiro Filho, S.L.M., Panzera, T.H. et al. Sandwich Structures Made of Discarded Bottle Caps Core and Hybrid Glass Fibre Composite Skins. Appl Compos Mater 28, 1427–1449 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10443-021-09922-x

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