Design and Manufacturing of a small wind turbine with biodegradable composite material

Abstract

The awareness for developing an eco-friendly industry based on green materials, sustainable technologies and optimum process with less environmental impact are a general societal consciousness, but it is still a considerable challenge to achieve. The biodegradable structural materials can contribute to reduce the CO2 emissions, the carbon footprint and increase the concept of recyclability for structural applications. In terms of performances, the natural fiber reinforced composite material could become in worthy alternative to E-Glass composite, wood reinforced materials and aluminum alloys because of their good ratio between mechanical properties, density and cost. However, the structural engineering applications are still very limited mainly because the lack of a robust manufacturing process. For that purpose, it has been developed an innovative mechanical extraction methodology based on the morphology of two species of bamboo, along with the optimization of the melting parameters to manufacture a fully biodegradable Bamboo-PLA composite. Furthermore, in order to define the future applications, the mechanical properties have been analyzed under different thermal cycling conditions.

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