Effective utilization of silica from waste cow dung ash filler reinforced biodegradable jute epoxy composites: influence of silica on its mechanical properties

The natural biodegradable wastes are recycled and developed with new-class composite materials to obtain desirable thermo-mechanical properties with zero toxic environments and maintain the environment’s sustainability and eco-systems. The research aim is to synthesize the silica nanoparticles from biowaste cow dung ash through the sol-gel route and to prepare biodegradable epoxy composites with 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8 wt.% of silica nanoparticles blended epoxy resin to lay the jute fibre mat, which has four layers with a thickness of 0.5 mm. The fabricated composite samples were subjected to mechanical, dynamic, thermal, and microstructural characteristic studies. The observation results found that the sample 5 composite contained 8 wt.% of silica performed high flexural and sample 4 showed the maximum impact strength 98 ± 1.05 MPa and 2.9 ± 0.071 J, respectively. The dynamic mechanical analysis of 6 wt% composite samples 4 offered a good dynamical storage modulus of 40.1 ± 0.34 GPa. The experimental result observation found that the composite sample 5 with increased weight percentages of silica nanoparticles showed enhanced thermal stability. The SEM results revealed that the silica nanoparticle was identical and distributed uniformly.