Reduced weight fibre-reinforced polymers The EC, an active supporter of the Rio Earth Summit and its principle agendas of sustainable growth, has supported numerous projects that aim to actively embrace such philosophies. In one such project, the EC foresaw a need to source new polymer composite materials that would have equal strength of present day materials, but display reduced weight characteristics. Industrial Technologies © Corel Fibre-reinforced polymers are a composition of at least two different polymers, one that contains strength and toughness and the other that displays elastic/flexible mechanical properties. The polymers that are combined are able to trade off their inherent weaknesses for the strengths of the other. This then provides new materials with equal or greater strength and lower weight when compared to comparative materials of today. Successful bonding of composite polymers is dependant on various systems that test the active surface compound characteristics, such as covalent bonding and the failure dependent criteria. Besides the 2 polymers that are to be bonded, the resin used to bind them together has to display strong adhesion characteristics. This requires additional testing, which is why this project has used the new sensitive atomic force microscopy tool to identify the Young modulus of the composite polymer interfaces. Several good results have thus far been obtained from different laboratories, with each one using different testing methods. In addition several examples have been shown to confirm the results for adhesion strength of a given fibre-matrix system, and this data is comparable from one laboratory to another. The interphase network has different facilities capable of dealing with interphase and interface problems associated with composites; whilst the Young modulus results can be used for future improved modelling. The remaining topics that cover data-reduction; identify the problems encountered with non-linear, elasto-plastic and/or elastic/flexible behaviour. However, further research will need to evaluate bonding failure and reversible bonding. Future objectives of this composite re-enforced polymer project are to test the stress/strain relationships between the resins and composites. The result of this additional data will provide scientists with sufficient information to further understand the overall compatibilities of composite stress structures, and their data reduction analysis. The results obtained so far have led to a collaborative photo-elastic determination of matrix and interface project between the MMSC and US. Whilst, Twaron BV is in discussion with the MMSC, IPF and Calipso BV for potential future collaboration.
