Epoxy stiffness

Although these two IPs possess different widths, in both cases the epoxy stiffness was found to be reduced in the vicinity of the interfacial border between Cu(oxide) and epoxy. In the second case, the existence of a much wider IP can... 

Thus the addition of the stiff carbon fibers has a very great effect in stiffening the epoxy matrix. Eor the commonly used fiber volume fraction of 0.6 the unidirectional carbon—epoxy lamina has a predicted extensional stiffness E = 145 GPa (2.1 x 10 psi)-... 

Most successful composites combine the stiffness and hardness of a ceramic (like glass, carbon, or tungsten carbide) with the ductility and toughness of a polymer (like epoxy) or a metal (like cobalt). You will find all you need to know about them in Chapter 25. 

In the ease where the turbine and supports have a minimal eross seetion, then the ability to inerease the stiffness of these pedestals is minimized. Consequently, the objeetive is to eoneentrate on inereasing the mass of the pedestals. This inerease is aeeomplished by filling the eavities with a speeial mortar prepared with epoxy and steel shot. The density of this speeial mortar ean be in exeess of 300 pounds per eubie foot. To injeet this speeial mortar, a pipe has been installed in the aeeess hole that was drilled in the side of the pedestal near the top. These same teehniques ean be employed to stabilize the foundations under mueh smaller equipment. 

Fiber-reinforced composite materials such as boron-epoxy and graphite-epoxy are usually treated as linear elastic materials because the essentially linear elastic fibers provide the majority of the strength and stiffness. Refinement of that approximation requires consideration of some form of plasticity, viscoelasticity, or both (viscoplasticity). Very little work has been done to implement those models or idealizations of composite material behavior in structural applications. 

Several experiments will now be described from which the foregoing basic stiffness and strength information can be obtained. For many, but not all, composite materials, the stress-strain behavior is linear from zero load to the ultimate or fracture load. Such linear behavior is typical for glass-epoxy composite materials and is quite reasonable for boron-epoxy and graphite-epoxy composite materials except for the shear behavior that is very nonlinear to fracture. 

The example considered to illustrate the strength-analysis procedure is a three-layered laminate with a [4-15°/-15°/+15°] stacking sequence [4-10]. The laminae are the same E-glass-epoxy as in the cross-ply laminate example with thickness. 005 in (.1270 mm), so that the total laminate thickness is. 015 in (.381 mm). In laminate coordinates, the transformed reduced stiffnesses are... 

For two- and three-layered cross-ply and angle-ply laminates of E-glass-epoxy, Tsai [4-10] tabulates all the stiffnesses, inverse stiffnesses, thermal forces and moments, etc. Results are obtained for various cross-ply ratios and lamination angles, as appropriate, from a short computer program that could be used for other materials. 

For a specially orthotropic square boron-epoxy plate with stiffness ratios 0 /022= 10 and (Di2-t-2D66) = 1, the four lowest frequencies are displayed in Table 5-3 along with the four lowest frequencies of an isotropic plate. There, the factor k is defined as... 

Certain plastics provide higher strength and stiffness a broad range of properties exit. Even though there are literally over 35,000 plastics available worldwide (for all plastic fabricating processes) only a few hundred are used in RPs. In turn only a few of those are predominantly used in most of the RPs. The thermoplastics (TPs) include principally nylons and polypropylenes, as well as polycarbonates, acetals and polyesters. Thermosets (TSs) include predominantly polyesters as well as epoxies, phenolics and urethanes. 

Kevlar has the highest tensile strength and is often used as a reinforcing fibre in composites with, e.g., epoxy, PEEK. The thermotropic liquid crystal polymer Vectran is made by melt polymerisation of p-acetoxybenzoic acid and 6-acetoxy-2-naphthoic acid, (the corresponding hydroxy acids decompose on melting). Because of its liquid crystal properties the polymer can be spun into fibres from the melt. Kevlar is spun from a solution in concentrated sulfuric acid, and can be melt drawn to give a high modulus (stiff) polymer. Vectran ... 

In the foregoing considerations, formation of elastically inactive cycles and their effect have not been considered. For epoxy networks, the formation of EIC was very low due to the stiffness of units and could not been detected experimentally the gel point conversion did not depend on dilution in the range 0-60% solvent therefore, the wastage of bonds in EIC was neglected. For polyurethanes, the extent of cyclization was determined from the dependence on dilution of the critical molar ratio [OH] /[NCO] necessary for gelation (25) and this value was used for the statistical calculation of the fraction of EIC and its effect on Ve as described in (16). The calculation has shown that the fraction of bonds wasted in EIC was 2-2.5% and 1.5-2% for network from LHT-240 and LG-56 triols, respectively. 

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