Design of lightweight structural components for the white goods industry by using recycled waste plastics

This work is focused on the development of a procedure to make stiffness assessments and fatigue life assessments on industrial components made of short-fibre reinforced materials through the manufacturing process of injection moulding. This procedure has been applied to different components of washing machines made by Electrolux S.P.A., which is the partner company of this PhD. For this end a wide experimental campaign has been done in order to characterize the mechanical behaviour (in particular, the fatigue behaviour) of the material which these components are made of, which is a recycled polypropylene reinforced with short glass fibres and filled with calcium carbonate particles. A novel criterion for the fatigue life estimation of components have been developed, calibrated on the results of the above mentioned experimental campaign, and then applied to industrial components.