Glass Fiber Reinforced Polyester Syntactic Foam

摘要

Glass bubbles (GB) have been used as additives in polymer composites to producelight weight syntactic foams. Developments in light weight polyesters have providedan avenue for a class of low density (<1.5 g/cm3) composites. Low density glass fiber(GF) reinforced syntactic polyester (PE) foams were manufactured by incorporatingGB into the PE resin paste prior to sheet molding compound (SMC) manufacturing.This study examines the mechanical properties of a syntactic foam composite incomparison to a baseline GF reinforced PE composite. Resin formulations are similarto those used in industrial SMC practice, and are modified with GB to producesyntactic foams. The mechanical properties are characterized by a variety oftechniques including tensile testing, flexural testing, and impact testing. Therheological behavior of the PE paste prior to SMC fabrication is also determined. Thesyntactic foam composites are expected to reduce the density of the final compositewithout reducing the volume fraction of GF, thereby lowering part mass whilemaintaining mechanical integrity.