Shredding energy consumption of GFRP composite waste

This work investigated effect of glass fibre fabric structures, feedstock feed rate and screen size on specific shredding energy of glass fibre reinforced plastics (GFRP) waste via a two-level factorial design of experiment study. Four types of fabric structure, i.e. unidirectional (UD), biaxial (BIAX), triaxial (TRIAX) and chopped strand mat (CSM), were impregnated separately with unsaturated polyester resin to manufacture GFRP plates. The shredding energy was measured using a two-wattmeter approach. During shredding, CSM demonstrated a relatively flat power consumption curve compared to other fabric types. It was also noticed that the GFRP plate reinforced with more complex woven structure, i.e. TRIAX, required higher energy for shredding, especially with a combination of high feed rate and small screen size. It was found that mechanical efficiency was only around 8.2-15.7% and 0.8-2.2% for shredding at feed rate of 60 kg/hr and 10 kg/hr respectively. It was also found that adopting a larger screen size and lower feed rate could reduce the specific shredding energy.