Author : Arun.P.S, S. Sathish and C. Narendhar

The outer part of a tire is called tread. It can be manufactured by using styrene butadiene rubber. Here polystyrene is used for tire manufacturing due to its attractive properties when compared with styrene butadiene rubber. Silicon carbide synthesis is done by sol gel processing by using two different carbon precursors, called chitosan and graphin. Tetra ethyl ortho silicate is used as silicon precursor. Sol gel process needs 24hr aging of sol gel in the furnace at a temperature of 7000 C. The characterization of silicon carbide nanoparticles is done by UV-visible spectrometer and Nanoparticle analyzer. The graph were obtained for two different samples using UV-visible spectrometer. The software used here is called WinASPECT PLUS. Particle size of the sample is analyzed by Nanoparticle Analyzer. The particle size of the silicon carbide is found that 14.7nm. After analyzing the samples, the samples were dried for the purpose of polystyrene thin film casting. Polystyrene film was formed by thin film casting method. Three samples were prepared for the testing, one is without adding silicon carbide and remaining two samples prepared by adding silicon carbide. The reagents used for polystyrene film are crystal polystyrene and benzene. Benzene has the ability to evaporate and thin film is formed.

Keywords: sol-gel process, polystyrene, Nanoparticle, precursor

Article published in International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Sciences 2014, Special Issue-2 (Feb 2014)