Influence on mechanical properties with the addition of limestone powder in polyester/fiberglass composite

With industrialization and population growth, solid waste management has become a universal challenge. The destination and incorrect storage of the waste from quarries have become a recurring problem caused by the extraction of mineral resources. The possibility of use for this waste, to minimize its impacts, is the creation of new products that can be useful to engineering using stone powder. Therefore, this study aims to create a new composite using limestone powder with different granulometry to analyze the influence that its insertion and the grain size can cause in these materials. The produced laminates were submitted to uniaxial tensile tests under the norm ASTM D 3039 and volumetric density ASTM D 792, The modifications that occurred in the properties of the specimens were studied in detail, obtaining results that show that the insertion of limestone powder provides the material with new mechanical characteristics, such as the rigidity increase. Among the produced composites, the one that had received limestone as obtained presented the best performance, increasing 9.33% of its elasticity modulus in comparison to the original.