| dc.description.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. | en_US |
