Reactive oligomer to improve the impact characteristics of structural composites used in civil and medical applications

摘要

Composite materials are increasingly utilized in many civil engineering and medical applications such as conveying tubes and pipelines, making artificial human parts, dental applications, reinforcing structures, etc. The glass reinforced composite is one of the most common composite that is used for its good mechanical properties and also its rationally low price. Polymeric resins such as epoxy are used as the constitutive material in producing glass reinforced composites. In this research paper we improve the impact resistance of the glass-reinforced composite using Hycar reactive oligomer. Mechanical impact strength tests have been conducted using a notched sample. The obtained test results show that the impact resistance of Hycar modified glass-reinforced composite is enhanced by addition of the Hycar to the glass reinforced composite. Moreover the glass transition temperature (T g) of the samples has been measured experimentally using a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) instrument. The results of measuring T g however shows that these g improvements in impact resistance of the composite material are accompanied with a slight reduction in the glass transition temperature of the modified composite samples. Moreover the damaged surfaces of fractured samples were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. © IDOSI Publications, 2012.