Fracture analysis of vinyl ester composites cured under microwave conditions

Abstract

The use of composites plays an important role in the fields of Mechanical and Civil Engineering. The idea of using composite materials in the two afore mentioned fields are no longer new. In the Fibre Composite Design and Development (FCDD), University of Southern Queensland (USQ) many researches and experiments on new lightweight materials and structures have been carried out. In the research, FCDD found that the composites made from vinyl ester resins suffer considerable shrinkage during hardening. With this issue in mind, research on the methods to decrease the shrinkage of the composites had been carried out. Ku (2002) claimed that by having vinyl ester composites cured under microwave conditions, such shrinkage can be reduced. The material used was thirty three percent by weight flyash particulate reinforced vinyl ester composite VE/FLYASH (33%). The purpose of this project is to research, measure and compare the fracture toughness of vinyl ester composite cured under ambient and microwave conditions by using the short bar test. The specimens will then fractured by using the MTS 810 Material Testing Systems and the value of fracture toughness was obtained through some calculations. And finally the results will analyzed by using Latin Square, determine which treatments were most effective in maintaining the fracture toughness while reducing the shrinkage of vinyl ester composite, and by how much, and which are worthless, so we can weight the economic alternatives.