Pengaruh Komposisi dan Ukuran Makro Serbuk Kulit Kerang Darah (Anadora Granosa) Terhadap Komposit Epoksi-ps/serbuk Kulit Kerang Darah (SKKD)

Abstract

Nowadays, polymer usage in industrial sector is developing greatly because of the advantages of polymer such as inexpensive, lightweight and rustproof. Usually polymer is not used alone but rather blended with other materials in order to create composites which exhibit better properties. In this study, composite is prepared with epoxy resin as matrix and cockle-shell powder as filler. Epoxy resin was chosen as matrix because of its good chemical and weather resistance, and versatile in various application. Cockle-shell powder is used as filler because of its constituent is promising in strengthening composite while reducing waste of cockle-shell. The materials needed to prepare composite are polystyrene as toughening agent, chloroform as solvent, epoxy resin, polyaminomaide hardener and cockle-shell powder. Cockle-shell was crushed into powder using ball mill and then sieved. The sieve used in this study varies from 50, 80, 110, 140, 170 mesh. Composite is prepared by dissolving polystyrene (10% weight by matrix) in chloroform first with the ratio of 1:4 (w/w) and then mixed with mixture consists of epoxy resin pre-mixed with cockle-shell powder using certain composition. The filler composition used in this study varies from 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50%. Resin mixture is mixed until homogeneous and then casted using hot press machine. The prepared composite is tested to obtain its mechanical properties and SEM and FTIR characteristics. The obtained result from this study is the optimum filler composition is at 30% and optimum particle size is at 170 mesh, the result from FTIR characteristics shows that the addition of cockle-shell powder create groups of SiOH, and SEM characteristics shows that the best fracture surface of composite is shown in the image of composite with 170 mesh particle size and 30% filler composition.