In recent years, polymer/mineral filler composites have attracted great interest, both in industries and academic researches, because they often show a remarkable improvement of materials properties when compared to virgin polymers. Calcium carbonate, CaCO3, is one of the most abundant materials on the planet and it has been often used to obtain polymer composites. The properties of its particles (size, shape and modulus) can provoke a significant effect, especially on mechanical behavior. HDPE/CaCO3 compounds are widely used in the automotive industry. In the present study, the effect of CaCO3 addition to the mechanical and flow properties of these compounds was evaluated using a simple 2n factorial design, with n = 3 factors: filler content; particle size and screw speed. The dependent variables analyzed were: Young modulus; impact strength and melt flow index (MFI). The results showed that the greatest impacts on the dependent variables were related to changes on mineral filler content.
HDPE; CaCO3; HDPE/CaCO3 blends; Characterization
