Characterization of Polyurethane Composites Manufactured Using Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding

Abstract

Glass fiber-reinforced polymer composites have promising applications in infrastructure, marine, and automotive industries due to their low cost, high specific stiffness/strength, durability, and corrosion resistance. Polyurethane (PU) resin system is widely used as matrix material in glass fiber-reinforced composites due to their superior mechanical behavior and higher impact strength. Glass fiber-reinforced PU composites are often manufactured using pultrusion process, due to shorter pot life of PU resin system. in this study, E-glass/PU composites are manufactured using a low-cost vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding process. a novel, one-part PU thermoset resin system with a longer pot life is adopted in this study. Tensile, flexure, and impact tests are conducted on both the thermoset PU neat resin system and E-glass/PU composites. a three-dimensional finite element model is developed in a commercial finite element code to simulate the impact behavior of E-glass/PU composite for three different energy levels. Finite element model is validated by comparing it with experimental results.

Department(s)

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Second Department

Chemistry

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0924-3046

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2015 Taylor & Francis, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2015

Link to Full Text

Share

 
COinS