FRICTION DISPLAYED BY THE SLIDING OF RUBBER ON EPOXY FILLED BY RECYCLED RUBBER PARTICLES

The brittleness of floor materials made of epoxy resins limits their applications. To decrease that effect, recycled rubber particles and paraffin oil are proposed to blend epoxy. The role of oil is to increase the viscoelastic property of the proposed composites. Different sizes of recycled rubber particles were used as filling material, while oil content was 5.0 and 10.0 wt. %. The tested composites slid against rubber surface, where coefficient of friction was determined. The experiments revealed that composites filled by oil showed slight decrease in friction values compared to composites free of oil. As the oil content increased, friction decreased. When the rubber content increased, friction significantly increased. The recommended rubber particle size was ranging between 1.0 to 2.0 mm that caused the highest friction values. As for composites filled by oil, further increase in rubber particle size was accompanied by friction increase. It was observed that values of friction coefficient were much higher than the recommended values for safe floor materials. The difference in the friction values observed for unfilled and filled composites oil was slight. Based on that, the proposed composites can be used in different applications, where addition of oil into epoxy matrix is intended to decrease the abrasion of the proposed composites.