Thermal gravimetric analysis of glass fiber reinforced composite for understanding the impact of copper oxide in relation to titanium oxide filler particles
Shahinoor Alam, Mohammad Asaduzzaman Chowdhury
Quarterly No. 1-2, 2021 pages 12-21
DOI:
keywords: composite, glass fiber, epoxy, thermal characteristics, TGA, CaCO3, Al2O3, MgO, TiO2, CuO
abstract In this work, the composite samples required to investigate their thermal properties were fabricated employing the con-ventional hand lay-up technique, followed by a light compression molding process. A fixed weight of plain woven glass fiber and epoxy with four different types of fillers as calcium carbonate (CaCO3), aluminum oxide (Al2O3), magnesium oxide (MgO) and titanium oxide (TiO2) or copper oxide (CuO) of different weights (5, 10 and 15 g) were studied. According to thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), it was observed that the melting point (Tm) and glass-transition temperature (Tg) are affected by the presence of CuO and TiO2, which indicate the degree of composite crystallinity established by the stronger interfacial in-teraction by the CuO than that of the TiO2 particles and the amorphous region of the chain. These studies were supported by examination of the surface morphology of the composites by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM).