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The paper describes an influence of rice husk particles as a filler in a common epoxy resin from the point of view of mechanical properties with the emphasis on the effect of silicon dioxide nanoparticles. The utilised filler has a diameter ranging from 1 to 100 micron. Rice husk particles are a natural composite system composed from organic matrix (cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin) reinforced with amorphous silicon dioxide nanoparticles. This typical composition provides specific parameters of rice husks like strength, hardness and mechanical barrier to the surrounding environment. The optimised composition of the designed composite system was 10 g of rice husk particles added to 1 kg of epoxy resin ChS - Epoxy 520. Rice husk particles in an epoxy resin composite system express an excellent adhesion. The system was evaluated from the point of view parameters like strength, Young modulus, hardness and density. All these parameters show analogous value of the parameters like unfilled epoxy resin. The coefficient of friction shows lower value in case of optimised composition (1 phr) in compare to unfilled epoxy resin. The wear rate (the weight loss of the samples) after adding the filler was increased at 75%. Optimised sample composition was tested for water absorption that was same as in unfilled epoxy resin although the organic particles were present in this epoxy system. The wear rate was positively influenced by the presence of a rice husk filler in a case when other fillers like pigments were added to an epoxy matrix. The described system has a potential to be used in the building industry.
Keywords: composite, rice husk particles, epoxy resin matrix, silicon dioxide nanoparticles© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.