Sustainable scrapping method of thermoplastic composite materials

Abstract

In this work, a novel method for more sustainable recycling and cost-efficient manufacturing technique of thermoplastic composite materials is proposed to recover and reprocess waste and end-of-life materials in aerospace industry. For the recycling of carbon fibre reinforced thermoplastics, an innovative scrapping process based on mechanical cutting has been developed and the properties of the obtained scrap and the recycled panel have been analysed. Thus, a cutting tool has been developed for the delamination of the input material with the aim of retaining long fibres in the resulting scrap. Different processing approaches of material scrapping have been evaluated aiming to obtain manageable scrap that can be subsequently used for a compression moulding process. Additionally, an automatic process has been evaluated to manage the scrap and perform the corresponding lay-up to manufacture high-quality thermoplastic composite products with recycled materials. Tensile strength and elasticity modulus properties were tested, and results were discussed. Finally, the life cycle assessment of the new process technology was conducted.