Study On Preparation And Properties Of Epoxy Vinyl Lightweight Composite Materials

With the rapid development of the aerospace, marine exploration and engineering fields in our country,The utilization rate of composite materials increases gradually, and people have a higher requirements on lightweight materials. It becomes a hot topic in the field of composite materials that how to reduce the density of the composite materials while ensure their strength and realize the target of lightweight of the equipments.A kind of hollow glass beads/composite material with low-density and high-strength was made by adding 35wt%, 40wt%, 45wt% and 50wt% hollow glass beads into epoxy vinyl resin via hot-pressing process, with methyl ethyl ketone peroxide and cobalt naphthenate as matrix curing system. The properties of density, compressive strength, bending strength and hardness of all samples were tested, and the effect of hollow glass beads content on performance of composite materials was determined, and the result showed that the specific strength of the material fabricated by 40wt% of hollow glass beads is best. In order to further reduce the density of material, the composite microspheres/composite material were made by adding 2.0wt%,2.5wt%,3.0wt% and 3.5wt% of the hollow polymeric microspheres into the hollow glass beads/composite material system with 40wt% hollow glass beads. the effect of hollow polymer microsphere content on the performance of composite materials was researched.The result showed that the density, compressive strength, bending strength and hardness of the materials decreased obviously with the content of hollow glass beads being increased. The density, compressive strength, bending strength and hardness decreased by 23.4%, 50.0%,41.5% and 14.0% respectively with the amount of the added hollow glass beads being increased from 35wt% to 50wt%. Combining with the fracture morphology, it is found that the interface bonding between hollow glass beads and matrix weakened as the content of the hollow glass beads being increased. When the filling content of hollow glass beads was 40wt%, the maximum specific strength of the materials was gained.For the composite microspheres/composite material with 40wt% hollow glass beads and hollow polymeric microspheres with different content, the effect of the content of hollow polymeric microspheres on the properties of density, compressive properties, flexural properties and hardness was studied, The results showed these properties decreased with the content of the hollow polymer microspheres being increased, with the content of hollow polymer microspheres being increasing from 0.0wt% to 3.5wt%, the density, compressive strength, bending strength and hardness reduced by 8.7%, 30.8%, 38.4% and 4.7%,respectively. Finally, the properties of the composite microspheres/composite material made by adding 3.0wt% hollow polymeric microspheres and the hollow glass beads /composite material made by merely adding 45wt% hollow glass beads were compared, and the results showed that the compressive strength of the former is 6.6MPa higher than the latter while the density of the two materials are the same. It is concluded that the compressive strength of composite microspheres/composite material is higher than hollow glass beads/composite material with the same densitiy.