Glassy carbon foams as skeleton reinforcement in polymer composite
Jerzy Myalski, Bartosz Hekner
Quarterly No. 1, 2017 pages 41-46
DOI:
keywords: glassy carbon, foam, cellular structure, mechanical properties
abstract Glassy carbon foams were produced by the pyrolysis process using polyurethane foam with a layer of phenolformaldehyde resin as the precursor. The pyrolysis process was conducted in vacuum conditions at 1000°C. The pyrolysis conditions were determined on the basis of carried out thermogravimetric analysis. The basic mechanical properties like the compressive strength of the carbon foams was measured and compared with the theoretical value. Furthermore, the glassy carbon foams were applied as skeleton reinforcement in epoxy resin matrix composites. Analysis of the mechanical properties revealed that the values of hardness and compressive strength of materials with spatial carbon foam are almost two times higher than for a pure matrix applied as the reference material. The major factors that influenced the final mechanical properties are the quality of the obtained foams and the amount of carbon in the material volume. Moreover, it was proved that the application of carbon foam with low mechanical properties led to significant increases in the compressive strength of the composite materials.