Studying the Effects of Adding Silica Sand Nanoparticles on Epoxy Based Composites

The research about the preparation of submicron inorganic particles, once conducted in the past decade, is now leading to prepare polymer matrix composite (PMC) reinforced with nanofillers. The objective of present research is to study the modified effects of reinforcement dispersion of nanoparticle silica in epoxy resin on the physical properties, mechanical and thermal behaviour, and the microstructure of resultant composites. Stirrer mixing associated with manual mixing of silica sand nanoparticles (developed in our earlier research) (Ahmad and Mamat, 2012) into epoxy was followed by curing being the adopted technique to develop the subject nanocomposites. Experimental values showed that 15 wt.% addition of silica sand nanoparticles improves Young’s modulus of the composites; however, a reduction in tensile strength was also observed. Number of holes and cavities produced due to improper mixing turn out to be the main cause of effected mechanical properties. Addition of silica sand nanoparticles causes a reduction in degree of crystallinity of the nanocomposites as being observed in differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis.