Influence of adding activated carbon filler on sandpaper-treated epoxy resin surface

Abstract

Activated Carbon (AC) has been used as a filler material in several resin-based composites due to its influence on the product composite’s properties. AC can be obtained from natural fiber such as coconut shell that could be found easily in most areas thus guarantees its availability. Manufacturing process of Epoxy Resin (ER) allows manufacturers to easily add filler materials such as AC to the pre-cured liquid mixture in order to enhance its properties. In this paper, two square-shaped epoxy resins with 0 and 10% wt of AC were prepared. Three surfaces from each specimen were treated with sandpaper with grit number of G100, G1000, and G100 followed by G1000, respectively. Optical observation and surface roughness measurement were done to the treated surfaces to investigate its properties. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of AC powder addition to the sandpaper-treated surface parameters of epoxy-resin. From the experiment, G100 and G100+G1000-treated 10% wt AC samples produced smoother surfaces and G1000-treated 10% wt AC samples produced a rougher surface but with relatively small difference with the 0% AC surface. Therefore, compared with neat ER, ER with 10% wt AC tend to produce a smoother sandpaper-treated surface.