THE INFLUENCE OF LOW COST FILLER ON SOME MECHANICAL AND PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF A POLYMER MATRIX COMPOSITE

Abstract

Experimental study has been done in this research to explain the influence of low cost fillers contents on the mechanical and physical properties of unsaturated polyester resin composite with different weight fraction. The effect of three particles; Baby powder particles including MgO, Fire extinguisher particles including CaCO3 and chalk particles including SiO2 with weight fraction of (5%, 10%, 15%)Wf% added to polyester matrix on the wear rate under dry sliding conditions, hardness, thermal conductivity, and water absorption has been investigated. The wear rate was measured according to ASTM G99-05 standard with pin on disc machine, hardness measured according to ASTM D-2240 Shore D hardness test, Lee's disc technique used to measure thermal conductivity, while water absorption measured according to ASTM D 570 standard. The results shows that the addition of fillers leads to increasing the wear resistance, hardness and water absorption and decrease the thermal conductivity with the increasing in reinforcement material weight fraction. while, the wear resistance decreasing with increase in applied load. The results appeared that the addition of particles to polyester resin leads to increase in all the mechanical and physical properties tested in this research better than polyester specimen only and MgO-polyester composite given the best wear resistance.