The Effect of Using Recycled Polymeric Particles on the Features of Epoxy Composites: A Review Study

Abstract

Recycled polymers filled as particles play a role in partially replacing the base resin in the epoxy composite and achieving environmental sustainability. The current work represents a deep review of recent features of epoxy composites and the development in their characteristics that involve many polymeric additives such as reinforcing agents and stabilizers. The work comprises developing composites prepared by reinforcing epoxy with recycled polymeric materials as eco-replacement in an epoxy matrix. The filler is usually used in many sizes (from 50 µm up to 4 mm). To conduct experiments, the samples are produced by the hand lay-up process utilizing a variety of filler loadings (ranging from 1% to 50% by weight). The characteristics that have been studied were mechanical properties (tensile strength, compression strength, impact strength, hardness, fracture toughness) and thermal properties (thermal expansion coefficient, thermal conductivity, thermal stability), and electrical properties. The composite revealed a noticeable improvement in some properties and decreasing value in the other properties.