Evaluation of Mechanical Properties of Composites Made from Recycled Plastic and Waste Rubberwood Using Multiply-Response Surface Optimization as Green Building Materials

The objective of this study is to investigate the use of recycled high-density polyethylene (rHDPE) and rubberwood flour (RWS) to manufacture experimental wood-plastic composites (WPCs). The WPC formulations were developed with D-optimal mixture experimental design and analyzed using response surface methodology to determine the mechanical properties of the samples. The experimental data was utilized to carry out analysis of variance (ANOVA) and to create a regression model for the properties of the three factors considered in this study. The findings showed that the mechanical strength and hardness values of composite samples increased with an increasing RWS and rHDPE. Particularly, the nanoclay (NC) in the samples affected positively their hardness, impact strength, and direct screw withdrawal. The results also revealed that the optimum composition for all responses found 54.0 wt% rHDPE, 35.4 wt% RWS, 5.6 wt% NC, 4.0 wt% MAPE, and 1.0 wt% WAX with a desirability score value of 0.969. Based on the findings in this work in comparison of the experimental results and the predicted values of WPC samples had less than 5% difference.