Manufacturing of structural sections made of papyrus cane with unsaturated polyester adhesives for building eco-friendly houses

Abstract

Papyrus cane was used in different applications since ancient times, and it can be employed to build modern houses as well. To do so structural sections of papyrus cane were formed together using polymeric adhesive from unsaturated polyester resin (UP). The study consisted of manufacturing samples of different size ratios of the bulk reed material and also studying the effect of adding reeds with polymeric plasters, as the study included some mechanical and physical properties. The manual molding method was used in this project to prepare the structural section with weight rations of (10%, 20%, 30%, 40%) Wt. A group of practical tests were done to ensure the effectiveness of these sections including hardness test, Impact resistance, and thermal conductivity test. The results obtained from the test (Hardness, Impact) showed that there is a significant increase and improvement in the properties when reinforcing the highest weight fraction of the cane slices, which is at (40%) Wt, where the highest values were obtained at this percentage, were as follows: (85.15 N/mm2) for the hardness test and (21.31 KJ/m2) for the impact test. As for the thermal conductivity test, the results showed that the thermal conductivity decreases with the increase in the weight fraction, where the lowest value of the thermal conductivity was at the weight fraction of (40%), which is a value of (0.245 W /mC).