FABRICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF GFRP-POLYURETHANE COMPOSITE SANDWICH PANELS FOR EARTHQUAKE-RESISTANT BUILDINGS

Todays modern house walls use a lot of fabric panels that have good insulating properties, are energy-saving, and are easy to clean and sterilize so the room becomes healthier. These insulator panels are also widely used for earthquake-resistant houses because these materials are light and do not break easily. These panels are often also referred to as composite sandwich panels. The properties of this composite sandwich panel depend on the behavior of the two face layers of the composite material and the lightweight core material as the filler component. This research focuses on fabricating and characterizing sandwich structure glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) composites filled with rigid polyurethane foam. The main objective of this study is to observe the effect of the amount of epoxy resin as a binder between the GFRP face layer and the polyurethane core material on mechanical strength, such as tensile strength, flexural strength, and compressive strength. The test results showed that the maximum mechanical strength was in sandwich panels with the epoxy composition of 2.5 kg/m2 panels, with a flexural strength of 3.68 MPa, compressive strength of 15.53 MPa, and tensile strength of 0.175 MPa. The polyurethane core material is the most fragile part of the composite sandwich panel.