کائوچو و مواد مرکب چوب پنبه و نقش آنها در توسعه پایدار

With the current challenges that the industrial world faces regarding the unavoidable environmental impact of manufacturing goods, companies have been turning to sustainable design in order to reduce this impact and to minimize the damage to the environment while at the same time reaping the marketing bonus that is the claim of a greener product. This reduction of environmental impact is being done at multiple levels and especially at the design stage and one of the ways taken by companies to reduce this impact is to replace fuel-based materials such as polymers with natural materials. But in order for this replacement to take place, engineers and designers need to know the behavior of these materials. With that idea a set of mechanical tests and studies, namely bending and compression tests, have been performed on cork composites. Those composites were chosen for its importance to the Portuguese economy and its peculiar growth cycle and harvesting techniques, in order to ascertain the mechanical properties of cork composites and how it stands against polymers.

Possibly one of the most important events in the history of mankind, the industrial revolution almost completely transformed the social and economical landscape of the world, with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita increasing 10fold and population increasing 6-fold [1]. From manufactured goods at a lower price, the invention of the internal combustion engine, the creation of transportation networks and the development of capitalism the impact was felt in all aspects of the society. Unfortunately this revolution had a price. The increase in production was achieved from what was considered infinite resources, and those resources turned out to be anything but infinite.The first call of attention was made by Thomas Malthus in his book

The adoption of natural materials for sustainable development begins with the full characterization of their mechanical behavior in order to determine if such a material is able to handle the design parameters of any new design. The tests show that cork composites outperform their origin material and at a lower price. Their mechanical behavior precludes them from any sort of structural role, but given its density there is a future ahead for cork composites as a core material in a sandwich structure.