A Consideration of Fundamental Material Recycle of Epoxy Resin.

Epoxy resin is a typical thermosetting resin used as a matrix for composites, and generally difficult to recycle. As a first step of material recycle, reprocessed epoxy resin was prepared with ground epoxy resin. We measured the tensile properties of reprocessed epoxy resins with different volume fraction of ground epoxy resin. The breaking strength and breaking strain lowered with increasing the size and the volume fraction of ground resin. The tensile breaking strength and breaking strain increased slightly with the reciprocal of square root of particle size. We discussed the relation between cross-linking density and tensile property of resins, and found an experimental equation representing the results.