Effect of E-waste Rubber on Mechanical Behavior of Glass a fiber Reinforced with Epoxy Composites

摘要

Polymer composites play a vital role in structural applications enhancing the commercial aspects of less weight and high strength, sufficient ductility, hardness, brittleness and toughness. The desirable properties of these lightweight structures' form a favourable group while selecting materials recommending for applications. Adding to this the polymer matrix composites reinforced with fibers enhance excellent mechanical properties by adding filler particles into the matrix, unlike unfilled fiber reinforced plastic structures, filler composites exhibit superior bending and tensile strength. The process of developing filler composites is done by adding a minor amount of filler particulates in different percentage with respect to the volume of the matrix by employing the suitable technique. The present work highlights the importance of E-waste rubber which is directly obtained from waste tires which are powdered and sewed. The particle size is limited to 150μm which is then mixed to the matrix and cured the samples followed by adding filler witha smaller percentage which is increased gradually say 5%, 10%, 15% by weight of the matrix considered. The samples were prepared by hand lay-up technique; the prepared samples were cut and tested as according tothe ASTM standard. Tests have been carried out to assess the mechanical behaviour of prepared samples using digital UTM. It is concluded that samples containing 5% filler withstand maximum tensile strength. There is a 25% increase in tensile strength is observed for these samples as compared to unfilled composites. It is also noticed that the samples loaded with 5% filler shows approximately 18.75% increase in bearing bending load when compared to unfilled composite samples. This is due to the strong opposition by particulate filler to matrix de-bonding fromfiber against applied bending load resulting from the uniform dispersion rubber particles when it is loaded with the least percentage.