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

Abstract

Polymer, in industrial sector, has taken an important role because of the advantages of polymer such as inexpensive, lightweight and rustproof. Usually, polymer is used to create composites by incorporating other materials in order to possess 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 used in strengthening composite while reducing waste of cockle-shell. The materials needed to prepare composite are polystyrene as toughening agent for strengthening the composite, chloroform as solvent, epoxy resin, polyaminoamide 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 200, 230, 260, 290, 320 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 200 mesh. The obtained result from FTIR characteristics shows that the addition of cockle-shell powder create groups of SiOH and the obtained result from SEM shows that the best morphology is showed at composite with 30% filler and 200 particle size.