Tailoring the Thermomechanical Properties of High Performance Aerospace & Automotive Composite Materials

人们越来越需要创造高性能、轻质、坚固而坚韧的材料，用于航空航天、汽车等行业。出于几个原因，使用复合材料来满足这种需求现在是常见的。这些优点包括比传统材料显著减轻重量和设计灵活性。这种复合材料中的基体相起着几个重要的作用，包括将增强体结合在一起，保持形状和将应力传递到增强体上，但它也增强了性能。虽然纤维在提高拉伸刚度和强度方面是优异的，但是精心选择的基质将提供剪切和压缩刚度以及韧性。抗冲击能力是当今复合材料研究的最重要问题之一，改善热固性聚合物韧性的策略包括添加橡胶颗粒和溶解/相分离的热塑性聚合物。虽然使用这些方法将增加韧性，但通常难以相应地保持材料的强度和刚度。然而，高性能环氧树脂由于反应的环氧环或主链苯环的协同旋转而具有一些天然韧性。这提供了一种耗散能量的机制，从而提高了材料的韧性。作为对这一现象更广泛研究工作的一部分，本项目将研究系统地改变模型环氧树脂复合材料基体的化学性质的影响。一个结构属性地图将建立允许不仅矩阵相的属性，而且复合材料本身，被定制。将制造和测试各种树脂和复合材料样品，以建立地图。这反过来又将导致对基体和复合材料性能的深入了解，并允许复合材料设计师在未来更有效地使用这些材料。

There is a rising need to create high performance, lightweight and strong yet tough materials for use in industries including aerospace, automotive and others. The use of composite materials to meet this need is now common for several reasons. These include significant weight savings over traditional materials and design flexibility.The matrix phase in such composite materials plays several important roles, including binding the reinforcement together, maintaining shape and stress transfer onto the reinforcements but also it enhances properties. While fibres are excellent at improving tensile stiffness and strength, a well-chosen matrix will provide shear and compressive stiffness but also, toughness. The ability to survive impact is one of the most important questions requiring research in composites today.Strategies for improving the existing toughness in thermosetting polymers include the addition of rubber particles and dissolved/phase separated thermoplastic polymers. Whilst using these approaches will increase the toughness it is often difficult to correspondingly maintain the strength and stiffness of the material. However, high performance epoxy resins have some natural toughness courtesy of the reacted epoxy ring or cooperative rotation of the backbone phenyl rings. This provides a mechanism to dissipate energy and so improves the toughness of the material.As part of a wider research effort into this phenomenon, this project will investigate the effect of systematically altering the chemistry of a model epoxy resin composite matrix. A structure property map will be built allowing the properties of not only the matrix phase, but also the composite itself, to be tailored. A variety of resin and composite samples will be manufactured and tested in order to build the map. This in turn will lead to insight into the properties of both the matrix and composite, and also allow composite designers to use these materials more efficiently in the future.