| dc.description.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. | en_US |
