Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2018-2019)

Recycling, sustainability and environmental friendliness are relatively new to the world of composite materials. In aerospace and automotive industries, they are beginning to realize the need for a more balanced approach to design and manufacturing with these materials. There are ways to make composites more environmentally friendly. One is to use natural fiber composite materials in the design of sustainable structures. Another is to make use of the waste that is inherent to many composite manufacturing processes typical of the aerospace industry: prepreg cutoffs, rejected parts and part trimmings. Make use of the waste, then it would not only save on cost but would also lower the production of non-useable waste materials. There are thus two fronts where important research should be conducted: (1) sustainable design can be achieved by making use of more sustainable base materials, and (2) for those materials that are not sustainable, then find a way to recycle and reuse them. The science involved is to adapt current modeling and testing methods to improve the design and manufacturing of recycled and sustainable materials, which are not quite in the same basic form as regular composite materials. The approach must use advanced material models, material and process characterization equipment and an overall sustainable design approach.
An example of sustainability is to use natural fiber composites in the design of materials and structures. Because of their properties, natural fibers such as flax can be used to design materials that imitate wood, which is especially useful for finding replacements for endangered species of wood. For recycling, such as in the case of aerospace carbon fiber, there is a lack of available mechanisms to recycle. However, now there are relatively efficient ways to take that waste and extract a fairly consistent recycled carbon material. Now researchers must come up with methods to achieve a more complete recycling process. Waste material must be extracted consistently, be made available to users, then the users must have methodologies and manufacturing methods suitable for designing useful composite structures. The newness of the recycled materials also means that testing and characterization methods must be re-thought in order to get proper material property data required by designers. Sustainability should also not be restricted to the aerospace and automotive sectors. There are ways in which low cost processes can help reduce waste and allow for the fabrication of simple composite materials that can be useful in third world countries. This can have a global impact on waste reduction and provide economic benefit to many people.
It is essential for engineers and researchers to do their part in this type of research for the sake of the environment. The future benefits of this research will provide science and HQP that are both directly aimed at helping to improve the environment.