Epoxy - Glass microballoon syntactic foam: Study the effect of composition and microballoon type on density, porosity, and compressive strength

Abstract

Density and compressive strength are two important properties in the manufacture of syntactic foam materials. Syntactic foams are composites that are filled with hollow particles (microballoon). In this research, epoxy resin and glass microballoon were used as the main component. Two ways are usually done to get the syntactic foam properties as desired. The first way is by adjusting the composition of the microballoon and the second way is by choosing the type of microballoon. The effect of two types of microballoons with different crushing strengths (K15 and iM16K) on density, porosity, and compressive strength was carried out in this study. Instead of microballoons type, the composition of vol.% microoballoons varied as 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80% to investigate the influence of formulation. The results showed that at the same composition, microballoon with high crushing strength obtained higher compressive strength, but the density for microballoon with lower crush strength is lower. The increase in volume fraction for both types of microballoons resulted decreasing in density. With the use of low crushing strength microballoons, the compressive strength properties were decreasing with the higher volume fraction. But for microballoons with high crushing strength, there was no significant change in volume fraction variation.