Physical, mechanical and sliding wear behaviour of epoxy composites filled with micro-sized marble dust composites

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to establish the utilization of waste material i.e. marble dust for the preparation of polymeric composites. Here, epoxy/marble stone dust composites are prepared for different content of marble stone dust using the hand lay-up method and their physical, mechanical and sliding wear properties are evaluated. In the present investigation, it is observed that the addition of micro-sized marble stone dust increases the density as well as the void content of the epoxy composites. The addition of filler in epoxy results in low absorption of water i.e. 1.15 % for maximum filler loading of 40 wt% and immersed in water for a duration of 168 h. The tensile strength and flexural strength show decreasing trends with filler loading, whereas, the tensile modulus, flexural modulus, compressive strength and hardness are increasing with marble stone dust loading. The tensile strength and flexural strength of the composite marginally decrease to 28.5 MPa and 37.2 MPa respectively for a marble dust loading of 40 wt%. The maximum compressive strength and hardness obtained in the work are 94 MPa and 86.2 Shore-D number respectively which is an appreciable increment over the properties of neat epoxy. Taguchi’s experimental design was used to obtain the optimal parameter setting to minimize a specific wear rate. From the analysis, it was found that the content of marble dust is the most noteworthy factor in minimizing the material loss of the composite body.