Mechanical, swelling, and thermal aging properties of marble sludge-natural rubber composites

Background A large amount of post-consumer marble sludge waste is thrown away into landfills. The need to reuse this waste is increasing day by day due to the environmental concern and energy conservation. The purpose of this work is to explore the use of this waste for low-cost natural rubber composites. In the experimental part, three different microsizes: 10, 20, and 75 μm, with five different levels of loading up to 90 parts per hundred of rubber (pphr) were used in natural rubber (NR) composites to study the effect of marble sludge (MS) loading on the mechanical properties.