Studies on Mechanical and Fractographic Behavior of Polycarbonate-Toughened Epoxy-Granite Particle Hybrid Composites

Abstract

Epoxy resin based on diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA type) was toughened with varying weight fractions, i.e., from 0 to 10% of thermoplastic polycarbonate (PC). Compression and impact properties of the toughened resin matrix were investigated. Epoxy containing 6 wt% of PC showed highest strength and modulus. Further, composites were prepared with varying percentage viz., 30 to 60 wt% of silane coupling agent treated granite particle (TGP) loading with 6 wt% PC toughened epoxy resin as matrix. Mechanical properties such as compression and impact behaviour of these composites were assessed and catalogued. Fractographic studies of the composites have been carried out using scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

Interlaminar Toughening of GFRP—Part I: Bonding Improvement Through Diffusion and Precipitation

“…Some of them used different thermoplastic materials as modifiers. Shetty et al used 0-10 wt % of polycarbonate (PC) to toughen the epoxy resin [1]. Jin et al studied the effect of polyetherketone cardo (PEK-C) thickness on the fracture toughness [2].…”

“…Thus, viscometry is introduced in this study to determine the solubility parameter of polymers. The intrinsic viscosity of the solution is related with the degree of solvent's solubility: the solubility of the polymer is the same as the solubility of the solvent when the intrinsic viscosity of the solution reaches maximum value [15] ½g ¼ ½g max Á e VÁðdÀdpÞ 2 (1) when ½g ¼ ½g max and d ¼ d p . For this equation, g is the intrinsic viscosity, V is the molar volume of the solvent, d is the solubility parameter of the solvent, and d p is the solubility parameter of the polymer.…”

An investigation of epoxy/thermoplastic blends based on addition of a novel copoly(aryl ether nitrile) containing phthalazinone and biphenyl moieties

“…Many methods have been developed to successfully enhance their fracture toughness. Among these methods, although rubbers can be effective as toughening additives for epoxy resins, their drawbacks such as reduction in overall resin modulus and reduction in epoxy end‐use temperature limit their application in aerospace . In addition, for the highly crosslinked epoxy resins (trifunctional and tetrafunctional) commonly used in aerospace composites, rubbers are ineffective toughening additives due to a decreasing capability of the highly crosslinked resins to be plastically deformed …”

Graphite fabric reinforced PAEK composites by novel impregnation-co-film technique

“…Quality of the interfacial bonding for short fibre reinforced composites is widely reported with the help of fractographic studies [20,21]. Since, the fabric reinforced composites have relatively higher fibre wt%, it is very difficult to perform fractographic test on such samples.…”