Sustainable pultrusion sandwich profiles with mycelium core

Even for lightweight applications, there is a strong urge towards using bio-based materials, although the properties that can be achieved to date mostly prevent their use in the sense of high-performance materials. Additional barriers are caused by incompletely automated production processes and infrastructures for bio-based materials. The Fraunhofer Institutes for Casting, Composite and Processing Technology (IGCV), for Wood Research (WKI) and for Building Physics (IBP) are therefore investigating the use of mycelium as a sandwich material for fiber-reinforced composite profiles produced by using the continuous pultrusion process. The focus is on whether a mycelium material represents a competitive and sustainable alternative to wood- and oil-based sandwich cores in order to contribute to a sustainable added value with high relevance for multiple industries.