The main goal of this study is to evaluate the potential of waste stone powders as filler in composite materials with a matrix of unsaturated polyester. These wastes are generated in the form of stone fragments and stone‐cutting sludge. Ground marble wastes are thoroughly characterized with the aim to use them as fillers: Mineralogical and chemical composition, particle size distribution, and morphology of these waste stone powders are investigated. Unsaturated polyester resin composites with the different stone powder fillers are prepared. The influence of powder type on the composites’ mechanical properties (tensile, bending, impact, and hardness characteristics), water resistance, thermal stability as well as surface fracture morphology of composites are studied. The moduli of the composites increase by 100%, the hardness of the composites may be improved by 80% upon loading with the “waste” filler, leading to an economical material and helping to reduce waste.
7Due to the global demand for fibrous light-weight materials, research on composites 8 reinforced with plant materials has increased. Natural fiber reinforced composites offer 9 several advantages: light weight, competitive specific mechanical properties, easy 10 processing, large volume availability, low cost, and low environmental footprint. 11Especially, using agricultural wastes such as rice husk, saw dust etc. as fillers/fibres in 12 composites provides the chance to improve material properties while improving their 13 sustainability. In the present work, rice husk and saw dust were chosen as fillers for their 14 differing morphology, aspect ratios, and difference of structure. As matrices, polyethy-15 lene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) were studied, either neat or modified with maleic 16 anhydride grafted PP/PE as coupling agent or compatibilizer between hydrophobic 17 matrices and hydrophilic bio-fillers. The bending modulus is improved due to filler 18 addition. In presence of compatibilizer, the improved interfacial interaction leads to 19 improved bending and tensile strength as well as toughness. Furthermore, the influence 20 of the filler and compatibilizer on composite properties such as hardness, dynamic 21 mechanical behaviour, thermal expansion, thermal degradation, melting and crystalli-22 sation behaviour are presented.23
Polypropylene (PP) is an affordable plastic commodity but lacks massive use in engineering applications given its limited mechanical properties including significantly low impact strength. In this work, three polyolefin-based copolymers including ethylene-octene random block (Engage, E), ethylene-octene multiblock (Infuse, I), and ethylene-propylene copolymer (Versify, V) were blended with PP. It was found that the V copolymer was miscible while the rests were immiscible in the PP matrix. Mechanical testings indicated that the addition of the 20% E and 20% I copolymers significantly enhanced the impact toughness of PP up to 83% and 108% at À20 C, respectively. At a higher temperature such as 25 C, the impact toughness of the PP/E20 and PP/I20 were 400 and 571%, respectively. The enhancement of the PP impact toughness was governed by the particle size of the added immiscible copolymers. Experimental results also revealed that the good compatibility between PP and copolymers has an insignificant influence on the mechanical properties of PP while the essence of added copolymer plays a key role instead. The findings from this work provide significant insights into the design of PP-based products with desirable properties to satisfy requirements demanded by engineering applications.
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