Effect of the quartz powder on the performance of the two layers glass fiber reinforced polymer composite with emulsion binder.

In the paper, effect of quartz additions on the durability of a polymer composite was investigated. The tested material was based on a resin MC-DUR 1200VK with two layers of E-type glass fiber reinforcement of an area density 300 g/m2 with an emulsion binder. The quartz was added in form of powder of fraction 0.1–0.3 mm in different proportions. Durability was measured in terms of specific wear work obtained from the novel tribological tester TT-4. Its important feature was the application of friction belt instead of disc or plate, which made it possible to avoid undesirable impact of the used friction surface and wear debris on the measurement results. Apart from that, standard measurements of flexural strength, shear strength between the layers, tensile strength, proof resilience, and microhardness were performed. It was found that the examined polymer composite increased its wear resistance when it contained 1% of the quartz powder. Similarly, the best results were achieved for the composite with 1% addition of quartz for the shear strength and proof resilience. However, further increase of the addition content caused decrease of the wear resistance. On the other hand, in comparison to the composite with no quartz powder, all other properties worsened after the quartz powder was added in any proportion. Despite no clear trends in characteristics after quartz addition was present, important finding was that it was disadvantageous to increase above 1% addition of quartz powder in the composite of resin MC-DUR 1200VK reinforced with two layers of E-type glass fiber of a weight 300 g/m2 with an emulsion binder. Initial researches also demonstrated that quartz additions might have different effect on the similar composite with other sort of reinforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]