Preparation and Characterization of Polymer- Ceramic Composite Bio-material

Abstract

This work focuses on studying the addition effect of the prepared HA powder asa filler material before and after the calcination process with different volumefractions (2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, 15) vol% to the unsaturated polyester resin matrix.Many mechanical and physical tests were used to determine the properties of theprepared composite material which involved tensile strength, the modulus ofelasticity, the elongation percentage at break, compression strength, compressionmodulus, bending strength, impact strength, fracture toughness, hardness and waterabsorption percentage. For the prepared HA powder, the Ca/P ratio was increasedafter the calcination process from 2.45 to 2.51. X- ray diffraction patterns for theprepared HA powder before and after the calcination process revealed an increasein the HA peak intensity after the calcination process. Secondary phases alsoappeared after the calcination process like (α- Ca3(PO4)2 ) and (β- Ca2P2O7). For theprepared composite material with both groups of HA filler particles, the results hadshown that the mechanical properties which included: tensile strength, modulus ofelasticity, compression strength, compression modulus, bending strength, fracturetoughness and hardness have been increased with increasing volume fraction ofHA filler particles and reached their maximum value at (7.5 vol%). Furthermore,the increasing in volume fraction revealed a decreasing in the evaluated properties.Both the elongation percentage at the break point and the impact strengthdecreased with increasing volume fraction of HA filler particles. The waterabsorption percentage as a physical property for the prepared composite materialshowed an increase with increasing volume fraction of HA filler particles. Theimprovement of unsaturated polyester resin with calcined HA filler particles hadshown greater values for the fore-mentioned properties than the improvement ofunsaturated polyester resin with uncalcined HA filler particles.