The care of the world environment poses many challenges to the proper disposal of mineral wastes. Particulate wastes can be used to modify the properties or lower the cost of polymers. The influence of an iron-silica rich waste on the hardness of an epoxy resin is evaluated in this work. It is shown that the hardness values are polymer dominated for volume fractions of waste lower than 0.30, but for higher volume fractions a useful increase in the hardness numbers can be achieved. The coarser the particles are the more heterogeneous is the microstructure of the composite. Nevertheless, particulate rich layers increase the hardness of the material several times. (C) 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [References: 23]
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