Investigation of Damping and Stiffness Properties of Egg Shell Reinforced Thermoplastic Polymer

The present work deals with the investigation of damping and stiffness properties of the thermoplastic material reinforced with egg shell micro sized particles. Developed polymer composite material has been proposed for mounting base of a Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) sensor. The egg shell micro powder is initially coated with a refractory material and added in the thermoplastic polymer. A coupling agent is used to increase the bonding of the micro reinforcement to the polymer. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Electronic Dispersion Spectroscopy (EDS) inspection is performed for the proposed composite material to investigate the particle morphology and chemical composition. The damping factor and natural frequencies of the specimen made from this developed material are determined experimentally by using impact hammer and accelerometer along with Fast Fourier transform (FFT) analyzer. Experimental observations, with different proportion of the egg shell reinforcement, indicate that maximum improvement in the damping factor up to 252 % can be achieved with the egg shell particle reinforcement in comparison to that of the plain thermoplastics without any reinforcement. Lastly, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) simulation results reveal that the proposed composite material can reduce peak acceleration of the MEMS sensor by 38% in comparison to that of plain thermoplastic without egg shell particle reinforcement.