The Effect of Various Textile Wastes (Human Hair, Denim and Pantyhose) on the Mechanical Properties of Composite Materials

As technology advances and people's needs rise, the amount of waste produced rises in tandem with increased productivity in every industry. Aside from the fact that clothing is one of the most basic human necessities, the unstoppable growth of the fast fashion trend in recent years has boosted both the textile industry's production and waste. The goal of this research is to recycle these textile industry wastes and use them in a different sector. In this context, the mechanical properties (Charpy impact strength, drop-weight impact strength, tensile strength, and flexural strength) of hybrid composite structures composed of recycled textile wastes (denim waste, human hair waste, and pantyhose waste) and E-glass plain woven fabric are compared to those of E-glass plain woven fabric reinforced composite structures. While the vacuum assisted resin transfer method is used for production, epoxy resin is employed as the matrix material. The mechanical results reveal that, aside from tensile strength, the mechanical properties of the testile waste (denim, human hair, and pantyhose) and E-glass fabric reinforced hybrid composite constructions can compete with those of the pure E-glass fabric reinforced sample. In both impact strength tests, the hybrid samples reinforced with human hair outperform the other samples, whereas the denim waste hybridized samples get the highest flexural strength values. Besides that, the statistical significance of all results is evidenced by a 2-sample t-test.