Ajayi Ayodele Abraham, Turup Pandurangan Mohan, Krishnan Kanny
Composite Research Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Durban University of Technology, South Africa.
Heliyon. 2024 Apr 27;10(9):e30428. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e30428. eCollection 2024 May 15.
This study focuses on improving the mechanical properties of sandwich composites by developing epoxy-based sandwich composite panels with hollow glass microspheres/nanoclay hybrid core and banana fiber facesheets for structural applications. The mechanical performance of sandwich composite panels made with hollow glass microspheres (HGM)/nanoclay hybrid core with banana fibers face-sheet composites panel is investigated in this work. The HGM content of the core was varied from 1 wt% to 3 wt% in the sandwich composites panel, while the nanoclay content of the core was varied from 1 wt% to 5 wt% in each of the HGM-filled series of the sandwich composite panel, these sandwich composite panels were fabricated using a conventional resin casting method. In this investigation, the mechanical, water absorption, and buoyancy behavior are thoroughly studied and the findings revealed better improvement at the sandwich composites with hybrid core formulation with banana fiber facesheets than the sandwich composites without hybrid core formulation. This demonstrates that banana fiber with epoxy resin has a limited amount of strength when used without a hybrid core but delivers better performance when HGM and clay particles are mixed as the hybrid core because of excellent interfacial adhesion between the hybrid core and the matrix. The improved mechanical properties could suggest that this material may be suitable for application in industries where sandwich structures that are lightweight with good mechanical properties are required. This study showed a new area of sandwich structure development by enhancing mechanical properties using hybrid core and banana fibers.
本研究致力于通过开发具有空心玻璃微珠/纳米粘土混合芯材和香蕉纤维面板的环氧基夹层复合材料板来改善夹层复合材料的力学性能，以用于结构应用。本文研究了由空心玻璃微珠（HGM）/纳米粘土混合芯材与香蕉纤维面板复合材料制成的夹层复合板的力学性能。在夹层复合板中，芯材的HGM含量从1 wt%变化到3 wt%，而在每个填充HGM的夹层复合板系列中，芯材的纳米粘土含量从1 wt%变化到5 wt%，这些夹层复合板采用传统的树脂浇铸法制造。在本研究中，对力学性能、吸水性和浮力行为进行了深入研究，结果表明，与没有混合芯材配方的夹层复合材料相比，具有香蕉纤维面板的混合芯材配方的夹层复合材料有更好的性能提升。这表明，香蕉纤维与环氧树脂在没有混合芯材时强度有限，但当HGM和粘土颗粒作为混合芯材混合时，由于混合芯材与基体之间具有优异的界面粘合力，其性能会更好。力学性能的改善表明，这种材料可能适用于需要轻质且具有良好力学性能的夹层结构的行业。本研究通过使用混合芯材和香蕉纤维增强力学性能，展示了夹层结构开发的一个新领域。
