Sandwich Composites with Recycled Textile Materials

Purpose and goal:

The main aim of this project is to reuse the textile fabrics utilized in different industries after their end of life. Rather than discarding textile materials or incinerating them after their life span, cleaning processes and/or treatments can be carried out on the textiles in order to utilize them for specific composite applications. Eventually, these solutions make the bio-based sandwich composites less expensive, with greater properties.

Expected results and effects:

Compaction of the textile materials, or loss of void volume, is of the main reasons why the textile undergoes changes during processing. Moreover, the textile is subjected to various conditioning processes that is wearing the textile resulting in fiber loss.The textile waste the proposal is focusing on, has still good properties, such as strength and durability, which could be used in composite materials.

Approach and implementation:

Preliminary work has been performed at University of Borås to incorporate recycled textiles in a sandwich composite. A layer of recycled textile can be incorporated into the sandwich structure, and this leads to improved structural performance.

Textiles can have varying thicknesses, structures and porosity which can result in different properties. The target application for these materials could be sandwich composites, in which the textile is used as the core material.