Studying The Effect of Polymer Powders on some Mechanical Properties of Epoxy

Abstract

To determine the possibility of using polymer powders as reinforcing materials in the thermoset polymer matrix composite , epoxy as the matrix and carboxy methylcellulose (CMC) and polyethylene glycol (PEG 4000) as the reinforcing powders wereused to prepare a particle reinforced composite. In the sample preparation, seven weightfractions of each powder (0.02, 0.04, 0.06, 0.08, 0.1, 0.12, 0.14) wt% were designed todetermine the mechanical properties of composites that represented by hardness andcompression strength. The results of this research were: for epoxy reinforced with CMC,the hardness increases with increasing the weight fractions reaching to (78.2 ) at 0.1 wt %and decreases in other weight fractions while maximum compressive load (7.324kN )was obtained at 0.12wt %, for epoxy reinforced with PEG4000 the hardness increaseswith increasing the weight fractions reaching to (71.1) at 0.06wt % and decreases in otherweight fractions while maximum compressive load (10.449 kN) was obtained at0.08wt%.