Moisture Absorption of cork-based Biosandwich Material Extracted from Quercussuber L. Plant: ANN and Fick’s Modelling

ABSTRACT

The building sector is one of the most dynamic in terms of energy consumption, consuming about 40% of the world’s energy. This same sector is also responsible for about 1/3 of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In recent years, the adoption of composite materials, particularly those strengthened through the use of natural fibers is growing in all areas. This increase is the direct result of the important performances offered by these materials and that includes lightness, thermal, and acoustic insulation along with respect for the environment. This led to the integration of materials, such as bio composites or bio sandwiches, into various building structures constructions relating to civil engineering. However, numerous researches related to bio composites showed the need to explore them further particularly concerning the issue of moisture absorption as the presence of water affects the behavior of plant fibers both in terms of swelling and degradation. It is within this context that the present study focuses on modeling the water absorption behavior of bio sandwich materials having an agglomerated cork core associated with fibers extracted from the plant Quercussuber L. Fick’s law and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) are applied to model the experimental results pertaining to this absorption behavior. The experimental investigation starts by placing the original samples in tank filled with distilled water at an ambient temperature of 25°C. Mass samples are later and periodically taken on specimen with cork core having different thicknesses (5, 10, and 20 mm) as well as on laminated skin sandwiches made of short flax fibers until saturation that lasted around 25 days. The two Fick’s diffusion characteristic parameters represented by the mass gain at saturation (M_m) and the diffusion coefficient (D) were determined analytically and water absorption kinetics behavior was recorded and later compared to the curves predicted by Fick’s laws. Statistical processing of the results was carried out through the application of the analysis of variance ANOVA.

摘要

就能源消耗而言, 建筑行业是最具活力的行业之一, 消耗了全球约40%的能源. 这一部门也造成了全球约1/3的温室气体排放. 近年来, 复合材料, 尤其是通过使用天然纤维增强的复合材料在各个领域的应用都在增长. 这一增长是这些材料提供的重要性能的直接结果, 包括轻质、隔热和隔音以及对环境的尊重. 这导致了将生物复合材料或生物三明治等材料整合到与土木工程相关的各种建筑结构中. 然而, 大量与生物复合材料相关的研究表明, 需要进一步探索它们, 尤其是关于吸湿的问题, 因为水的存在会影响植物纤维在膨胀和降解方面的行为. 正是在这种背景下, 本研究侧重于模拟生物夹层材料的吸水行为, 该材料具有与从植物Quercusuber L.中提取的纤维相关的凝聚软木芯。菲克定律和人工神经网络(ANN)用于模拟与这种吸水行为相关的实验结果. 实验研究首先将原始样品置于环境温度为25°C、充满蒸馏水的罐中. 随后, 在具有不同厚度(5、10和20mm)软木芯的样品上以及在由短亚麻纤维制成的层压皮三明治上定期采集大量样品, 直至饱和, 持续约25天. 分析测定了由饱和质量增益(Mm)和扩散系数(D)表示的两个菲克扩散特征参数,并记录了吸水动力学行为, 随后将其与菲克定律预测的曲线进行比较. 应用方差分析对结果进行统计处理.

KEYWORDS:

• Flax fibers
• sandwich structure
• water absorption
• Fick’s law
• ANN

关键词:

• 亚麻纤维
• 夹层结构
• 吸水率
• 菲克定律

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully a cknowledge (la Direction Générale de la Recherche Scientifique et du Développement Technologique, Algérie) DGRSDT for their support in this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).