Thermo-mechanical properties of fused borosilicate syntactic foams

Thermo-mechanical properties of fused borosilicate syntactic foams

The properties regarding thermal stability of syntactic foam such as coefficient thermal expansion, alpha (CTE) had been investigated in this paper. Determination of CTE in composite materials is commonly used for application in heat exchange transformation. The CTE comparison using kinetic theory model has not really been investigated yet for composite materials. The syntactic foam prepared by mixing fused borosilicate or glass microballoon with matrix resin were considered in this study. The different weight percentage of glass microballoon varied from 2wt.% to 10wt.% were analysed using thermo-mechanical analyser (TMA). The results showed that CTE value became up to 53-63% lower than the pure resin after mixing with different weight percentages (2wt.%-10wt.%) of glass microballoon. Experimental results showed that the CTE decreases when glass microballoons are added into the composites measured at different temperatures ranging from 30°C to 70°C. The CTE from the experimental results were also compared with Turner’s modification model for composites for its suitability for thermal expansion of syntactic foams. The results indicate that Turner’s modification model exhibits a close correlation with the reduction up to 80% of CTE based on experiment.