Mechanical and tribological properties of bovine hoof powder reinforced polyurethane composites

This paper intended to discuss the fabrication and evaluation of mechanical as well as tribological properties of biowaste-based composites.The biowaste employed in the present work is bovine hoof.In this work, bovine hoof powder (BHP)-reinforced polyurethane composites were fabricated using varying weight percentages (0%, 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, 10% and 15%) of bovine hoof powder, polyol and isocyanate.The bovine hoof powder is processed by cleaning, milling, pulverizing, sieving, washing, defatting and treating with 0.1N NaOH solution.The composites were fabricated by mixing polyether polyol, bovine hoof powder and toluene diisocyanate (TDI) hardener and pouring into a die followed by curing at higher temperature.The mechanical and tribological properties of the composites were studied on the composites.It was observed that properties such as tensile strength, tensile modulus, coefficient of friction, density, porosity, oil absorption and water absorption of the composite specimens increase along with the bovine hoof powder loading.In contrast, properties such as wear rate, hardness and impact strength of the composites decrease with increase in BHP loading.With increase in loading of bovine hoof powder from pure polyurethane, it was observed that the stiffeningsoftening-stiffening behavior of composites occurred.It was observed that the optimum weight % of bovine hoof powder loading amounts to 7.5% by weight.The BHP composites indicated enhanced hydrophilicity.Furthermore, the FTIR analysis demonstrated significant degradation in the presence of UV radiation and an oxidation process at 1724cm and 1600 cm.The photolytic and hydrolytic effects were also found to cause microcracks.Accordingly, it may be inferred that the properties of the proposed composites are appropriate to applications like foot wear and related fields.Since the raw material used for the fabrication of the proposed composite is derived from biowaste, the resulting composite is not only eco-friendly, but also aligns with the United Nations -Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).