Concept
The Project aims to develop new composite structures from renewable materials; namely wood derived cellulose fibres and resins obtained from natural raw materials. The related manufacturing processes for advanced composite components such as nanomaterials will also be explored both as reinforcing fibres and as additives to bring new functionalities to structural composites. The targeted applications of the proposed renewable structural composites are in the transportation and construction fields. This represents a significant step forward with respect to the current State-of-the-Art wood composites processing, where wood panels are obtained by directly cutting wood pieces, or pressing in polymeric matrix short wood fibres or wood powder as fillers, in extrusion-like processes.
The WOODY process and approach are schematized in the figure below.
Main Innovations
This innovative proposal involving wood derived should be oriented towards a Composite Thinking approach: the radical renewing of the construction basic elements (plates, pillars, beams) introduced at the design stage and the concept of shells developed on the basis of the specific applications. Such requisite, developed in close cooperation with the innovative materials, are to be complemented by their mechanical and physical properties, enabling maximum exploitation of the performances. The Scientific / Technological Objectives are listed below:
- Raw Materials:
- Cellulose fibrils extracted from wood
- New processes for the high yield production of furfural from biomass
- Selection and development of nanobased natural components for functionalizing the wood based materials
- Treatments:
- Light chemical treatment of cellulose to remove lignin and other materials before fibrillation step with super mass colloider and high shear mixing processes related to reduce energy consumption.
- Chemical treatment
- Enzymatic recombined CBD based pretreatments for nanofibril production with combined functionalizing process and protein- mineral fibril combination
- Treatments for nano fibril and whiskers separation, relying on chemo-mechanical and thermal treatments with high throughput
- Recombinant enzymatic treatment to increase the quality of the fibrils-to-fibre build-up, leading to fibrous material suitable for the textile reinforcements of the composite laminates
- Treatments enabling to strongly limit the moisture sensitivity of the composites, fully compliant with the base constituents and with the functionalizing additives
- Modified textile processing, enabling to cost-effectively transform the fibres into yarns, webs, woven or knitted textiles, therefore producing the reinforcing elements of the laminates
- Composite Materials:
- Laminate panels: reinforcement fabric, matrix material and additives based on wood based cellulose, wood treatment and other eco sustainable materials
- Sandwich panels: foam core, skin layer and adhesion promotion agents
- Software Design Tool: supporting the design of the composite materials and parts, will be based on different modules interfaced in order to supply the user a complete aid from the selection of materials, to the development of design and operative guidelines for respecting norms. Different Modules are therefore identified, each of them organized into different sub-modules:
- Knowledge Repository Module
- Conceptual Design Module
- FEA Preprocessor Module
- Composite Design Module
WOODY
