Comparing the Influence of Glass and Silica Fillers on the Critical Mechanical Properties of E-Glass Cyanate Modified Epoxy Laminate

Laminates that could find its way for high performance applications in Aerospace and Electronics industries requires structural rigidity besides a higher stiffness and better electrical properties. These kinds of laminates with enhanced rigidity/transmission index are required so as to get functionalized for applications like Radome, whose main requirement is to be a structurally stronger and electromagnetically transparent one, in order to transmit the EM signals with minimal attenuation loss. Such kind of materials could be a further fine tuned with an intention of upgrading their performances. These indigenous materials with additional reinforcements with different types of fillers could then be worked out for a wide spectrum of futuristic applications. By analyzing the behavior of the laminates under tensile, flexural loading and few critical electrical properties could eventually end up with a potent material that can be effectively used for signal processing applications, as in Radome. Over this perspective, laminates in cross ply configuration with 0/90/0/90 degrees as applied to a 4 plied laminates were fabricated. Cyanate ester blended with epoxy resin as matrix and E glass unidirectional fiber with 1200GSM as reinforcement with add on fillers like, Glass spheres and fumed silica in micrometer and nano meter regime were added to the laminate. Tensile and Flexural strength &their moduli were found out. It was observed that better structural responses were found for the laminate with 10% glass spheres than the ones that were made and tested with fumed Silica as filler. Addition of fumed Silica also could not be done to the same extent of glass spheres due to its rheological properties. But smaller addition of it was found to exhibit relatively better structural responses than that of Glass spheres based laminte. This is attributed to its inherent good dispersability in the resin and higher deagglomeration tendency (3), especially when added at its optimized volume fraction. Also it was proven that the type of filler and its volume fraction has an influencing role on the properties of a laminate and a precise tradeoff between the chosen parameters is required to finalize on a candidature laminate for a particular application.