Influence of Compaction Pressure and Particle Content on Thermal and Mechanical Behavior of Artificial Marbles with Marble Waste and Unsaturated Polyester

Compact artificial stones are widely used in buildings around the world, and the expected demand to the next years is increasing. In this study, stone fragments from marble processing are recycled as raw materials for produce compact artificial stones using compaction in a vacuum environment (100 mm Hg). Crushed marble waste (80 and 85%wt) are mixed with unsaturated polyester resin as binder. Materials were processed under compaction pressures of 1 and 10 MPa, for 20 minutes at 90 °C. Artificial marble with flexural ultimate strength of 25 MPa, water absorption below 0.2% and homogeneous particles distribution were obtained to materials produced with 80%wt of marble particles. To artificial marbles with 85%wt of particles, lower flexural ultimate strength and higher water absorption were observed (18 MPa and 0.4% respectively). In addition, the greater compaction pressure used improves slightly values obtained in 3 points bending test. Furthermore, tangent delta peaks at 115 °C were observed to evaluated artificial marbles.