Studying the Effects of Adding Silica Sand Nanoparticles on Epoxy Based Composites

Abstract

The research about the preparation of submicron inorganic particles, once conducted in the past decade, is now leading to prepare polymer matrix composite (PMC) reinforced with nanofillers. The objective of present research is to study the modified effects of reinforcement dispersion of nanoparticle silica in epoxy resin on the physical properties, mechanical and thermal behaviour, and the microstructure of resultant composites. Stirrer mixing associated with manual mixing of silica sand nanoparticles (developed in our earlier research) (Ahmad and Mamat, 2012) into epoxy was followed by curing being the adopted technique to develop the subject nanocomposites. Experimental values showed that 15 wt.% addition of silica sand nanoparticles improves Young’s modulus of the composites; however, a reduction in tensile strength was also observed. Number of holes and cavities produced due to improper mixing turn out to be the main cause of effected mechanical properties. Addition of silica sand nanoparticles causes a reduction in degree of crystallinity of the nanocomposites as being observed in differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis.

Influence of Alkali Treatment and Dune Sand Content on the Properties of Date Palm Fiber Reinforced Unsaturated Polyester Hybrid Composites

“…Ahmad et al [10] also reported that the delay of fracture in impact test is due to pulling and breaking mechanism of fibers from polymer matrix.…”

“…Ahmad et al [10,11] also conducted a research on the epoxy and polyester-based composites to study the influence of nanoparticles of Tronoh silica sand as well as glass fiber on the mechanical and thermal properties of the systems. The results showed that addition of nanoparticles improved the mechanical and thermal properties of the developed composites.…”

Characteristics of nanocomposite polymer with temperature variation and heating time by using simple mixing method

“…The density is done by weighing the weight of the cube test object containing 5 cm at the age of 7 days and 28 days with the target density achieved as shown in Figure 5 and Figure 6. The addition of nanosilica to the polymer matrix can increase the density, the higher density of an object, the greater mass of each volume [9].…”

A Brief Review on Biomedical Applications of Hydroxyapatite Use as Fillers in Polymer

“…However, HA with particle size < 10 microns is classified as common inorganic filler used to improve the mechanical properties and biocompatibility of polymer composites [23][24][25][26][27][28][29], because of its excellent biocompatibility properties, non-toxic, non-immunog-enic and osteoconductive [23,[30][31][32][33][34]. It is similar to the silica powder used in polymer composites [35][36][37][38]. The human bone is a calcified tissue composed of 60% inorganic component (hydroxyapatite), 10% water and 30% organic component (proteins) [39].…”