Synthesis of non-phosphorylated epoxidised corn oil as a novel green flame retardant thermoset resin

This study aimed to produce a new potential flame retardant thermoset resin from epoxidised corn oil through a one-pot method using liquid inorganic catalysed with hydrogen peroxide. Using a gas chromatography–mass selective detector, attenuated total reflectance-fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, proton nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, optical microscopy, and scanning emission microscopy, we synthesised a bio-based resin based on newly designed parameters. The flame retardant capacity was fully established using thermogravimetric analysis and a micro calorimeter. The produced epoxidised corn oil had a relative percentage conversion of oxirane of approximately 91.70%, wherein the amount of double bonds converted into epoxides was calculated. A significant reduction from 17 to 40% in peak heat rate release (pHRR) and 26–30% in total heat release was observed, confirming its flame retardant property. Thus, the potential of epoxidised corn oil was demonstrated.

Mechanically Improved and Multifunctional CFRP Enabled by Resins with High Concentrations Epoxy-Functionalized Fluorographene Fillers

To meet the maximum potential of the mechanical properties of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP), stress transfer between the carbon fibers through the polymer matrix must be improved. A recent promising approach reportedly used reinforcing particles as fillers dispersed in the resin. Carbon based fillers are an excellent candidate for such reinforcing particles due to their intrinsically high mechanical properties, structure and chemical nature similar to carbon fiber and high aspect ratio. They have shown great potential in increasing the strength, elastic modulus and other mechanical properties of interest of CFRPs. However, a percolation threshold of ~1% of the carbon-based particle concentration in the base resin has generally been reported, beyond which the mechanical properties deteriorate due to particle agglomeration. As a result, the potential for further increase of the mechanical properties of CFRPs with carbon-based fillers is limited. We report a significant increase in the strength and elastic modulus of CFRPs, achieved with a novel reinforced thermoset resin that contains high loadings of epoxy-reacted fluorographene (ERFG) fillers. We found that the improvement in mechanical performance of CFRPs was correlated with increase in ERFG loading in the resin. Using a novel thermoset resin containing 10 wt% ERFG filler, CFRPs fabricated by wet layup technique with twill weaves showed a 19.6% and 17.7% increase in the elastic modulus and tensile strength respectively. In addition, because of graphene’s high thermal conductivity and high aspect ratio, the novel resin enhanced CFRPs possessed 59.3% higher through-plane thermal conductivity and an 81-fold reduction in the hydrogen permeability. The results of this study demonstrate that high loadings of functionalized particles dispersed in the resin is a viable path towards fabrication of improved, high-performance CFRP parts and systems.

Experimental and Numerical Comparison of Impact Behavior between Thermoplastic and Thermoset Composite for Wind Turbine Blades

Damage generated due to low velocity impact in composite plates was evaluated focusing on the design and structural integrity of wind turbine blades. Impact properties of composite plates manufactured with thermoplastic and thermoset resins for different energy levels were measured and compared. Specimens were fabricated using VARTM (vacuum assisted resin transfer molding), using both matrix systems in conjunction with carbon, glass and carbon/glass hybrid fibers in the NCF (non-crimp fabric) architecture. Resin systems used were ELIUM 188O (thermoplastic) from Arkema Co., Ltd. and a standard epoxy reference, EPR-L20 from Hexion Co., Ltd. (thermoset). Auxiliary numerical finite element analyses were performed to better understand the tests physics. These models were then compared with the experimental results to verify their predictive capacity, given the intrinsic limitations due to their simplicity. Based in the presented results, it is possible to observe that ELIUM is capable to replace a conventional thermoset matrix. The thermoplastic panels presented similar results compared to its thermoset counterparts, with even a trend of less impact damage. Additionally, for both thermoplastic and thermoset resin systems, glass layups showed the lowest levels of damage while carbon panels presented the highest damage levels. Hybrid laminates can be applied as a compromise solution.

Transparent Fiber-Reinforced Composites Based on a Thermoset Resin Using Liquid Composite Molding (LCM) Techniques

In this study, optically transparent glass fiber-reinforced polymers (tGFRPs) were produced using a thermoset matrix and an E-glass fabric. In situ polymerization was combined with liquid composite molding (LCM) techniques both in a resin transfer molding (RTM) mold and a lite-RTM (L-RTM) setup between two glass plates. The RTM specimens were used for mechanical characterization while the L-RTM samples were used for transmittance measurements. Optimization in terms of the number of glass fabric layers, the overall degree of transparency of the composite, and the mechanical properties was carried out and allowed for the realization of high mechanical strength and high-transparency tGFRPs. An outstanding degree of infiltration was achieved maintaining up to 75% transmittance even when using 29 layers of E-glass fabric, corresponding to 50 v. % fiber, using an L-RTM setup. RTM specimens with 44 v. % fiber yielded a tensile strength of 435.2 ± 17.6 MPa, and an E-Modulus of 24.3 ± 0.7 GPa.

QUASI-LINEAR VISCOELASTIC MODELLING OF UNCURED PREPREGS UNDER COMPACTION

Reinforcement compaction sometimes referred as consolidation process and is one of the key steps in various composite manufacturing processes such as autoclave and out-of-autoclave processing. The prepregs consist of semi-cured thermoset resin system impregnating the fibers. hence, the prepreg shows strong viscoelastic compaction response, which strongly depends on compaction speed and stress relaxation. modeling of time-dependent response is of utmost importance to understand the behavior of prepregs during different stages of composites manufacturing processes. The quasilinear viscoelastic (QLV) theory has been extensively used for the modeling of viscoelastic response of soft tissues in biomedical applications. In QLV approach, the stress relaxation can be expressed in terms of the nonlinear elastic function and the reduced relaxation function. The constitutive equation can be represented by a convolution integral of the nonlinear strain history, and reduced relaxation function. This study adopted a quasilinear viscoelastic modeling approach to describe the time dependent behavior of uncured-prepregs under compression. The model was modified to account for the compaction behavior of the prepreg under a compressive load. The deformation behavior of the prepreg is usually characterized by the fiber volume fraction, V . In this study, the material used was a 2/2 Twill weave glass prepreg (M26T) supplied by Hexcel® Industries USA. We performed a compaction experiment of the uncured prepreg at room temperature at different displacement rate and subsequent relaxation to describe the viscoelastic behavior of the prepreg. The model parameter calibration was performed using the trust-region-reflective algorithm in matlab to a selected number of test data. The calibrated model was then used to predict the rate dependent compaction and relaxation response of prepregs for different fiber volume fractions and strain rates.

BENCHMARKING VIRTUAL PERMEABILITY PREDICTIONS OF REAL FIBROUS MICROSTRUCTURE

ABSTRACT For fast and complete impregnation in Liquid Composite Molding, knowledge about the permeability of the fibrous reinforcement is required. While development of experimental methods continues, a parallel benchmark effort to numerically characterize permeability is being pursued. The approach was to send out the images of a real fibrous microstructure to a number of participants, in order for them to apply their methods for virtual permeability prediction. Via resin transfer molding a plate was manufactured, using the glass woven fabric Hexcel 01102 (295 g/m²) at a fiber volume content of 54% and a thermoset resin. From this plate, a specimen was scanned using a 3D x-ray microscope at a scan size of 1000 x 1000 x 1000 μm³ and a resolution of 0.521 μm³ per voxel. The sample extracted for the simulations with a size of 523 x 65 x 507 μm³ contains about 400 fibers of a single tow. It revealed a variation of filament diameters between 7.5-9.3 μm and a fiber volume content in average of 56.46% with a variation of 54 - 59% in the individual 2D-slices transverse to the fiber direction. The image segmentation was performed by 2D-slices, to which a Hough transform was applied to detect fiber centers and cross-sections. Then fiber paths were tracked through-out the slices by the closest neighbor algorithm. Finally, fiber paths were smoothened by means of the local regression using weighted linear least squares and a 1st degree polynomial model. The participants received a stack of 973 segmented (binary) 2D-images and a corresponding segmented 3D volume raw-file. They were asked to calculate the full permeability tensor components and fill out a detailed questionnaire including questions e.g. on applied flow models and conditions, numerical discretization and approximation methods, fluid properties etc. The received results scatter considerably over two orders of magnitude, although the participants were provided an already segmented image structure, thus eliminating from the beginning a significant source of variation that could have come from image processing. Model size, meshing and many other sources of variation were identified, allowing further specification of the guidelines for the next step.

3D PRINTING OF SHORT CARBON FIBER COMPOSITES VIA FRONTAL POLYMERIZATIONMORTEZA ZIAEE

Additive manufacturing (AM) of polymer composites is a growing field in academic and industrial research environment. Majority of research in this field is focused on thermoplastic-based composites, as manufacturing of thermoset composites requires long cure cycles that make the additive manufacturing process quite challenging. Even though thermoplastic composites are easier to print, the ultimate performance of composites is limited by low fiber volume fraction, relatively high porosity, and low mechanical performance of host polymers. Recently, a novel curing strategy based on frontal polymerization (FP) has been developed that enables 3D printing of high-quality thermoset polymers. In this approach, a monomer solution with a gel-like viscosity is in-situ cured following the extrusion from printing nozzle by a self-sustaining reaction front. In the present work, we use dicyclopentadiene as a thermoset resin that can be frontally polymerized to a high-performance solid polymer. We add short carbon fiber reinforcements (L ~74 μm) to resin to fabricate mechanically robust 3D composite structures. Our results show that incorporation of short fibers substantially improves the flexural strength and flexural modulus of 3D-printed composites by ~50 % and ~410 %, respectively, compared to traditionally molded neat samples. Optical microscopy from the crosssection of flexural samples reveals that no voids was formed within deposition lines.

PROCESS MODELLING THE CURE OF BISPHENOL-A EPOXY/JEFFAMINE SYSTEM USING ICME

The prediction of thermo-mechanical properties of a thermoset resin at different stages of cure is a complex process. An Integrated Computational Material Engineering (ICME) approach is used to predict the properties of a EPON828/Jeffamine D230 system. The proposed framework integrates two length scales - nano and microscale. Molecular Dynamics (MD) is used to predict the volume shrinkage and mechanical properties of the epoxy resin as a function of the progressing crosslink density at room temperature using the Reactive Interface forcefield (IFF-R). The predicted resin properties show good agreement with the literature, proving that IFF-R can be reliably used for this purpose. Once characterized, the predicted properties are used to further predict the effects of cure shrinkage and property transformation on the bulk-level composite residual stresses. P. P. DESHPANDE

Fabrication technique using a core and cavity mold of a hybrid composite ballistic helmet

Material used for helmet technology has transformed moderately little since the introduction of aramids, which ballistic helmets still uses woven aramids with a thermoset resin system. Most widely used strengthening material for ballistic helmet is Kevlar fibers which comprise outstanding impact resistance and high strength to weight ratio. For Kevlar reinforcement and resin shaping process, composite materials uses molding process in the fabrication methods. The most vital fabrication method is the hand lay-up process. Hand lay-up process normally consists of laying a dry fabric layer by hand onto a mold to shape into desirable design and shape. After the lay-up process is done, resin is then applied to the dry plies. There are several accessible curing methods and the most commonly used method is to let the product to cure at room temperature. This paper presents the fabrication process of ballistic helmet using a hand lay-up fabrication process with a core and cavity mold. This paper also describes the helmet mold design, materials and processing methods.