The mechanical strength of the artificial stones, containing the travertine wastes and sand
Aydin Shishegaran, Mohsen Saeedi, Sajjad Mirvalad, Asghar Habibnejad Korayem
Abstract
The present study investigates the development of artificial stones containing travertine powder, fine sand, and travertine sludge. The stone powder and sludge were considered as waste. The main target of this study is to reuse and recycle the travertine waste to produce sustainable artificial stone. Considering the used solid components, three groups of artificial stones, including: (1) the combination of powder and sludge, (2) the combination of powder and sand, and (3) the combination of powder, sludge, and sand, were proposed. The percentage of each solid component per total solid components, two kinds of epoxy resins, the percentage of the used resin per total solid components, and curing temperature were selected as the variables for preparing the artificial stones. Based on the number of variables and their levels, the Taguchi approach was employed to design mix proportions in the three groups. After conducting the compressive and flexural tests of the proposed mix proportion, the compressive and flexural strengths of un-conducted mix proportions were predicted using the Taguchi method. The results show that the effect of each variable on the compressive and flexural strengths of the stones of various groups are different. The samples prepared with epoxy resin type 828 are stronger than those prepared with epoxy 557. The best sample has the compressive and flexural strengths of 67.3 and 60.7 MPa, respectively. This mix proportion included 90% travertine powder, 10% travertine sludge, and 30% epoxy resin 828 per total solid components and was cured at 60 °C for 4 h.