Influence of fly ash on the curing characteristics of an epoxy resin

Abstract

With excellent damping capacity, growing interest has been focused on polymer concrete (PC) as a novel machine tool bed material in the field of ultraprecision machining. It is widely acknowledged that the fly ash (FA) is an essential component material in reducing the curing shrinkage of PC, which can significantly affect the curing characteristic of PC. However, the effect of FA on the curing characteristic of epoxy resin is not studied in detail. In this article, the effect of FA on the curing characteristic of epoxy resin was examined by differential scanning calorimetry. Experimental results show that the peak temperature and curing rates of epoxy resin/curing agent and epoxy resin/curing agent/FA increase with the increasing heating rates, and the peak temperature and curing rates of epoxy resin/curing agent are greater than that of the epoxy resin/curing agent/FA with the same heating rates. In addition, the difference between the maximum curing rates of epoxy resin/curing agent and epoxy resin/curing agent/FA decreased with the increasing heating rates. This article can provide technical reference for curing process of PC for machine tool beds and further improve the machining accuracy.