Production and charaterization of epoxy syntactic foam filled hollow spheres

Abstract

The research in this study involves production and characterization of epoxy syntactic foam with hollow spheres (EHoS) by using simple casting technique and innovation process. The epoxy syntactic foam (ESF) comprises single coated and double coated EHoS/ESF. Two different diameter of cell sizes EHoS also used which are small size (1-3mm) and medium size (4-6mm). EHoS is produced by coating the EPS beads with epoxy resin to save the cost whereas ESF is produced by embedding EHoS into mixture epoxy – hardener with 3% KOH solution. It was observed that the density, compression strength and modulus is higher for double coating (DC) of EHoS compared to single coated (SC) because of thicker wall cell. However, for the mode of failure EHoS SC is crushing and collapse completely and EHoS DC exhibits shear cracking matrix during compression loading. However, for flatwise orientation demonstrates higher compression strength and modulus than edgewise orientation due to the sample dimension has smaller aspect ratio so lateral expansion is restricted. Lastly, ESF filled with small sizes of EHoS give higher compression strength and modulus compared to ESF filled with medium size of EHoS.