Mechanical behaviors of hyberbranched epoxy toughened bisphenol F epoxy resin for cryogenic applications

Abstract

Epoxy resins have been widely employed in cryogenic engineering fields. In this work, bisphenol F epoxy resin was modified by an aromatic polyester hyperbranched epoxy resin (HTDE-2). Mechanical behaviors of the modified epoxy resins in terms of tensile properties and impact property were studied at both room and cryogenic temperatures. Moreover, the toughening mechanism was discussed by fracture surface morphology analysis. The results demonstrated that, the mechanical properties of composites initially increased until reaches the maximum value with increasing the mass content of the HTDE-2, and then decreased at both room temperature (RT) and 77K. Especially, the impact strength at 77 K was improved 40.7% compared with the pure epoxy matrix when 10 wt% HTDE-2 was introduced. The findings suggest that the HTDE-2 will be an effective toughener for the brittle bisphenol F epoxy resin for cryogenic applications. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.