Agglomerated cork: A way to tailor its mechanical properties

The use of natural materials like cork has been quickly spreading over the last years due to growing awareness of the scientific community and population about environmental issues. For example, the scrap coming from the production of traditional wine stoppers and other cork products can be reutilized, being generally triturated and agglomerated into new products. The so-called agglomerated cork material is nearly isotropic and has been finding a wide range of utilities, being a good thermal and acoustic insulator, vibration and impact absorber along with pleasant aesthetics. Nevertheless, literature has been addressing agglomerated cork material in a very general way, and defining density and grain size as the two main processing parameters. This piece of research aims to show that, apart from density and grain size, other parameters such as binder type or its quantity may also have a pertinent effect on the mechanical properties of cork in the agglomerated form. To this end, the whole production process is detailed and a campaign of static and dynamic tests is carried out. Conclusions show that agglomerated cork is an easily tailorable material and more information on its production aspects must be provided when employing it for scientific research.