Effects of the aluminum filler content on moisture diffusion into epoxy adhesives in distilled water and sea water

摘要

Epoxies are the most common of high-performance structural adhesives, especially in automotive and aircraft manufacturing. In a variety of industrial applications, epoxy adhesives are required to have enhanced thermal conductivity. The normal method of changing this property is to add to the epoxy a filler of higher conductivity than the continuous phase. Although the improvement in the thermal properties of adhesives by the addition of metal fillers is obvious, their influence on water sorption characteristics of adhesives is not clear. It was the objective of this study to shed light on these aspects, which are lacking in the literature. The emphasis was placed on determining the moisture sorption behavior of aluminum-powder-filled epoxy adhesives under complete immersion in distilled water and sea water. Moisture diffusion tests show that the addition of aluminum filler into epoxy decreases the total amount of water intake at saturation in both fluids. However, there appears to be no significant effect of the aluminum filler content on the moisture diffusivity in epoxy adhesive specimens in either distilled water or seawater. It has also been determined that the adhesives adsorb a larger amount of water upon exposure to distilled water than when exposed to seawater, whereas the moisture diffusion rate in the adhesive immersed in seawater is higher than that in distilled water. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.