ANALISI DEL COMPORTAMENTO MECCANICO DI SANDWICH ECO-COMPATIBILI RINFORZATI CON FIBRE NATURALI

The increasing environmental sensitivity in many industrial fields, from automotive to aeronautics to naval field, has led to an increasing demand of new bio-materials or renewable structural materials. In order to give a contribution to the design of eco-compatible structural materials, in this work new sandwich materials constituted by a core made by balsa and skins made by a composite material made by a “green” epoxy reinforced by agave fibers extracted from striated and americana agave obtained in Sicily by a proper research program financed by European founds. Previous theoretical analysis followed by systematical experimental analysis of the core, of the skins and the of the sandwich, have permitted to detect the actual mechanical behavior and the corresponding mechanical performance of such materials in term of strength and stiffness, as well as to have sufficient knowledge for their theoretical design and for further improvements of the structural performances.