Low-cost durable composite tooling materials based on recycled post-consumer carpet materials

More than 250,000 metric tons (600 million pounds) of carpet is discarded in landfills each year in USA, and is a big concern in terms of environmental pollution and economical liability. It is therefore necessary to develop sustainable post-consumer carpet-based products for high-value engineering applications such as composite tooling. To be considered as an acceptable composite tooling material, a composite has to meet several property requirements such as low coefficient of thermal expansion, reasonably good compressive strength, accurate tool dimensions after repeated exposure to curing cycles as well as the ability to withstand several curing cycles without change in mechanical properties. Recently, Oklahoma State University has developed a modified vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) process for recycling carpet materials into large-scale composite panels with excellent mechanical and acoustic properties. In this paper, we present an application of these composite materials for composite tooling applications. Graphene fillers have been used to improve the material properties, such as hardness based on Shore Durometer D scale, mechanical properties, lower thermal expansion of coefficient and higher through thickness thermal conductivity. The results indicated that the designed tooling material has the potential to be a low-cost composite tooling alternative for the industry. Copyright 2013 by Aurora Flight Sciences.