Abstract
Snail shell powder, a material of animal origin was used as a biodegradable filler and incorporated into low density polyethylene, LDPE, resins to produce green composites of LDPE. The range of added snail shell powder of particle size of 83?æm at varying percentages of 0%, 2%, 6% and 10% was added into LDPE. The composites were produced using injection moulding machine. Its effects on the mechanical properties of the polymer composites were tested; which include the tensile strength, percentage elongation at break, flexural strength and hardness. The surface morphology of the polymer composites was analysed via optical microscropy. The results showed that the filler had positive impacts on the mechanical properties of the polymer by increment in tensile strength from 128.29MPa to 137.56 MPa, flexural strength from 120.34 MPa to 145.76MPa and hardness from 43kN to 74kN. While the percentage elongation at break decreased from 200.16 to 168.34. Thus, snail shell powder was found to show great reinforcing properties in the prepared composites and can be used to improve some mechanical properties of polymers since it is organic, cheap, available, eco-friendly and biodegradable material.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval
Not applicable
Data Availability
The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].
Funding
This work did not receive any external funding.
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