Manufacturing and behaviour of sandwich composites made of starch as binder for core and adhesive between core and skins

Abstract

Novel sandwich composites were developed as potential building materials using low cost constituent materials such as ceramic microspheres, starch and paper. The sandwich composites made of syntactic foam core, paper skin, and starch adhesive for interface between syntactic foam core and paper skin, were manufactured by varying starch content in adhesive for interface. Two different microsphere size groups were employed for syntactic foam core manufacture with pre-mould processing method. Properties of skin paper with starch adhesive on were found to be affected by drying time of starch adhesive. Mechanical behaviour of manufactured sandwich composites in relation with properties of constituent materials is studied. Failure process of sandwich composites including failure sequence is discussed in relation with load-deflection curves.