Material Reuse of Waste Abrasive Particles from Abrasive Water Jet Technology in the Field of Polymer Particle Composite Systems

Various natural and synthetic fillers are used in the field of particulate reinforcing composite materials with an aim to increase the wear resistance or to reduce the price. Using a filler that is considered as a waste product can improve sustainable design of these composite materials. The abrasive water jet technology (AWJ) produces a waste product during cutting i.e. a sludge, which contains abrasive particles and residues of the cutting material. This paper researches a possibility of using the residual waste of the AWJ process for the fabrication of polymeric particle composites. Furthermore, the impact of using the waste sludge on the mechanical properties of the composite was determined. To this extent, the tensile strength, maximum elongation, wear resistance and hardness of three polymer systems were compared, two of them used one of the following fillers: (I) Garnet Mesh 80 (standard abrasive; G80N) and (II) used and processed Garnet Mesh 80 (G80R(AWJ)), and the last system was the matrix without the filler. The results proved good wettability between the matrix and both fillers (I) and (II). A significant difference was proved in the size and the shape of (I) and (II) particles. The particles (II) showed rounded edges.