The Effect Of Cell Wall Thickness On Mechanical And Physical Properties Of Rubber Wood Honeycomb Composite

Yang Xin, Mei (2017) The Effect Of Cell Wall Thickness On Mechanical And Physical Properties Of Rubber Wood Honeycomb Composite. Project Report. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

Text (24 Pages) The Effect Of Cell Wall Thickness On Mechanical And Physical Properties Of Rubber Wood Honeycomb Composite.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Registered users only until 15 June 2022. Download (621kB)

Abstract

Sandwich structure has been widely used in various fields owing to its impressive properties of high strength,high stiffness yet light weight at the same time.There are many core materials available for the sandwich structure and wood is one the promising structural materials. However,there is not research that applying hexagonal cells to the natural wood material for honeycomb core in sandwich structure.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of cell wall thickness on mechanical and physical properties of rubber wood honeycomb composite by designed sandwich structures with various cell wall thickness which were 1 mm,1.5 mm,2 mm, and 3mm.Woven roving E-glass fibre was used as the face sheets material with epoxy resin as the matrix and adhesive in the sandwich structure.The thick yet light weight honeycomb core used in this research was rubber wood.The sandwich structures were fabricated via vacuum bagging technique.The mechanical and physical behaviours of the fabricated samples were investigated by three point flexural,flatwise compressive,flatwise tensile, climbing drum peel,and density.Furthermore,the failure mode was studied by using optical microscopy.Generally, the design of 1.5 mm cell wall thickness achieved high specific mechanical properties compared to other designs. It showed high specific core shear strength of 1.14 Nmm/kg in flexural testing.In compressive testing,it exhibited a moderate specific compressive strength of 5.74 Nmm/kg.In addition,it has the highest specific flexural stiffness and specific tensile strength among the honeycomb composites which were 1.658 MNmm2/g and 1.585 Nmm/kg respectively.However,its peeling strength was not desirable due to the limitation encountered during fabrication process which weaken the interfacial bonding between the face sheets and core.Through comparison to previous study,core shear strength of CT 1.5 is higher than balsa wood sandwich structure with approximately 93.37 % which indicated that hexagonal rubber wood has higher resistance to core shear compared to balsa wood core.

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