Manufacturing and evaluation of polyurethane composite structural insulated panels

Composite materials are increasingly used in applications of civil infrastructure and building materials. The new generations of two-part thermoset polyurethane resin systems are desirable materials for infrastructure applications. This is due to high impact resistance, superior mechanical properties, and reduced volatile organic compounds when compared to the conventionally used resin systems such as vinyl ester and polyester. Glass fiber-reinforced two-part polyurethane composites and low-density polyurethane foam are used to design and manufacture composite structural insulation panels using vacuum assisted resin transfer molding process for temporary housing applications. Using these types of composite panels in building construction will result in cost-efficient, high-performance products due to inherent advantages in design flexibility. Use of core-filled composite structures offers additional benefits such as high strength, stiffness, lower structural weight, ease of installation and structure replacement, and higher buckling resistance than the conventional panels. Energy efficiency is known to be inherently better with the core-filled composite panel than in a metallic material. The panels can be designed to resist the required loads, and the study aims to evaluate the ability of lab scale tests and models to predict part quality in full-scale parts. Furthermore, it discusses the manufacturing challenges. Flexural tests and energy consumption evaluations were performed on these structural components. Finite element simulation results were used to validate the flexural experiment findings.