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

越来越多的人需要创造高性能、轻质、坚固但坚韧的材料，用于航空航天、汽车和其他行业。使用复合材料来满足这一需求现在很常见，原因有几个。这种复合材料中的基质相起着几个重要的作用，包括将增强体结合在一起，保持形状和应力传递到增强体上，同时也提高了性能。虽然纤维在提高拉伸硬度和强度方面非常出色，但选择合适的基质不仅可以提供剪切和压缩刚度，还可以提供韧性。抗冲击能力是当今复合材料中需要研究的最重要的问题之一。改善热固性聚合物现有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。虽然使用这些方法会增加韧性，但通常很难相应地保持材料的强度和硬度。然而，由于反应的环氧环或主链苯环的协同旋转，高性能环氧树脂具有一定的天然韧性。这提供了一种耗散能量的机制，从而改善了材料的韧性。作为对这一现象的更广泛研究的一部分，该项目将调查系统地改变模型环氧树脂复合基质的化学成分的效果。将建立结构属性图，不仅允许定制基质相的属性，还允许定制复合材料本身的属性。为了建立地图，将制造和测试各种树脂和复合材料样品。这反过来将导致对基质和复合材料的性能的洞察，并使复合材料设计者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.