Characterization of cork and cork agglomerates under compressive loads by means of energy absorption diagrams
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Characterization of cork and cork agglomerates under compressive loads by means of energy absorption diagrams Ramon Miralbes1 · David Ranz1 · Jan Ivens2 · Juan Antonio Gomez1 Received: 6 April 2020 / Accepted: 2 November 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Cork and cork agglomerates could be suitable replacements for petroleum-based polymeric foams due to their similar internal structure of cells and grains. Additionally, cork products have a renewable origin and are recyclable. Despite these notable properties, few studies have analysed the mechanical properties, especially the specific properties, of these materials under compressive loads. Moreover, although efficiency, ideality, and energy-normalized stress diagrams are commonly used for polymeric foams and 3D-printed lattice structures, these types of diagrams are not yet applied to cork products. It must be highlighted that efficiency diagrams are plotted only against nonspecific properties so, this article proposes additionally the use of nonspecific properties to compare materials not only in terms of properties per unit volume instead but also in terms of properties per unit mass that is more suitable for certain applications in which the weight is crucial. The materials studied herein include three different white cork agglomerates, a brown cork agglomerate, a black cork agglomerate, natural cork, and expanded polystyrene foam, which are subjected to quasi-static compressive loads.
1 Introduction Cork and cork agglomerates have been reported by many authors (Chua et al. 2017; Coelho et al. 2012) as a possible substitute for polymeric foams in certain applications where the material needs to absorb energy to protect other elements, such as in helmet liners (de Sousa et al. 2012) and packaging applications. The main advantage of cork and cork agglomerates is that they are of renewable origin and they can be easily recycled to produce new cork agglomerates (Knapic et al. 2016). Moreover, in contrast to polymeric foams, especially expanded polystyrene (EPS) which has low resilience, cork and cork agglomerates recover their initial shape after high strains (Maderuelo-Sanz et al. 2014). Consequently, cork and cork agglomerates are adequate materials for the use as protection material in applications that might need to absorb multiple impacts (Fernandes et al. 2019).
* Ramon Miralbes [email protected] 1
Department of Design and Manufacturing, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
Department of Design and Manufacturing, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
2
One of the main disadvantages of natural cork is that, due to its natural origin, there is substantial variability in its material properties (González-Hernandez et al. 2014; Lauw et al. 2018) and density (Silva et al. 2005). The former disadvantage can be overcome in cork agglomerates because the material properties can be tailored (Santos et al. 2017) by selecting the binder type, the grain size, and the volume fraction of the cork and the
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