Luffa Sponge as a Sustainable Engineering Material
The paper presents the first scientific study of the stiffness,strength and energy absorption characteristics of the luffa sponge with a view to using it as an alternative sustainable engineering material for various practical applications.A series of compression tests on luffa sponge columns have been carried out.The stress-strain curves show a near constant plateau stress over a long strain range,which is ideal for energy absorption applications.It is found that the luffa sponge material exhibits remarkable stiffness,strength and energy absorption capacity that are comparable to those of some commonly-used metallic cellular materials.These properties are due to its light-weight base material,and its structural hierarchy at several length scales.Empirical formulae have been developed for stiffness,strength,densification strain and specific energy absorption at the macroscopic level by considering the luffa fiber as the base material.A comparative study shows that the luffa sponge material outperforms a variety of traditional engineering materials.
Luffa sponge mechanical properties energy absorption sustainability
Jianhu Shen Yi Min Xie Xiaodong Huang Shiwei Zhou Dong Ruan
Centre for Innovative Structures and Materials, School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineer Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street,Hawt
国际会议
郑州
英文
3-8
2012-09-22（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）