rGFK goes Trailer - Smart lightweight design - trailer floor made of recycled GFRP

Saving energy and resources in the interests of climate protection requires that waste and production residues from glass fiber-reinforced plastic production be reused and not landfilled or incinerated in an environmentally harmful and cost-intensive manner. In the coming years, thousands of disused wind turbines will be decommissioned. While the foundations, towers and nacelles can be recycled easily, there is still no convincing solution for the blades, and there is a great need for research into ecologically and economically sensible recycling. This is precisely where the "rGFK goes Trailer" project comes in. By means of a continuous process chain from the evaluation and calculation of the materials to be recycled to the preparation, matrix development and testing to the implementation in new innovative sandwich structures and an accompanying LCA consideration, the new material and its application are fundamentally researched!
The aim is to give glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP) and also rubber particles from used tires a second and third sustainable life. A new lighter sandwich panel solution will be developed from the existing problem materials, which will reduce resource and energy consumption in freight mobility and at the same time guarantee the security of supply in the mobility industry for the future by researching and developing a new material from Austria. In addition, the project will investigate how intelligent sensor technology can be incorporated into the structure to provide trailer operators with information on load distribution and loading status.
Lightweight construction with an initially inhomogeneous recycled material would not work without a holistic approach, so in the project, materials research and the development of a new sandwich construction adapted to the material is embedded in the design of the trailer