Strain Rate Effect on the Mechanical Properties of Recycled Wood Particles/ Epoxy Composites

The objective of this research is to study the mechanical properties of recycled wood particles epoxy matrix composites through the manipulation of composites wood particles size and weight fraction for tensile tests with different strain rate. Wood saw dust has been collected from a saw mill, dried and sieved into 300 and 600 μm. Unsieved wood particles were also used in this study. Each of the categories of wood particles was mixed into Epoxy resin with weight percentage of 20% and 40% of total composites to produce dumbbell-shaped tensile test specimens. Result shows that there is an optimum wood particles size where the tensile properties are at the highest before the properties start to decrease with increasing particles size, except for 20% wt. wood particles whereby the Young’s modulus is the highest with mix (largest) wood particles. With increasing wood particles weight percentage, tensile strength decreased while young’s modulus increased. A wood plastic composite (WEC) was shown to be strain rate sensitive whereby tensile properties increased with increasing strain rate. Our study proves that WPC can be very advantageous due to its higher average tensile strength and also high young’s modulus compared to commonly used materials in the industries.