Modelling of Average Pore Size and Porosity of Porous Polycaprolactone/Hydroxyapatite (PCL/HA) Composite Blends
Suffiyana Akhbar1, Istikamah Subuki2, Rahida Wati Sharuddin3, Muhammad Hussain Ismail4

1Suffiyana Akhbar, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, University Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia.
2Istikamah Subuki, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, University Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia.
3Rahida Wati Sharudin, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, University Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia.
4Muhammad Hussain Ismail, Centre for Advanced Materials Research (CAMAR), Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia.
Manuscript received on September 23, 2019. | Revised Manuscript received on October 15, 2019. | Manuscript published on October 30, 2019. | PP: 5791-5797 | Volume-9 Issue-1, October 2019 | Retrieval Number: A3065109119/2019©BEIESP | DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.A3065.109119
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to develop mathematical relationship between average pore size and porosity of porous polycaprolactone/hydroxyapatite (PCL/HA) composite and investigate the combined effect of temperature and pressure of foaming process and presence of HA. Porous PCL/HA composite was prepared using supercritical carbon dioxide (ScCO2) solid state foaming process. Three different temperatures and pressures of foaming process were varied at 35°C, 40°C, 45°C and 10MPa, 20MPa, 30MPa respectively. Meanwhile weight of HA was varied at 10, 20, 30 and 40 wt%. The result from analysis of variance (ANOVA) using Microsoft Excel found that average pore size is reduced with higher pressure and content of HA presence does not significantly affect the average pore size due to poor distribution of HA. Meanwhile for porosity, higher temperature is more dominant in increasing of porosity compared to the HA content. In addition, both designed models have low values of Average Absolute Relative Deviation (%AARD) and high value of coefficient of determination (R2) which reflects a good and satisfying result between the experimental values and model predicted values.
Keywords: Anova Analysis, Porous PCL/HA Composite, Average Pore Size and Porosity.