Contact person: Hendrik Nolte
Fibre reinforced composites are indispensable in the regime of modern lightweight structures as used in aerospace, automotive industry or wind power plant. Those materials provide enormous weight savings and significantly increase the efficiency of a structure. Therefore, various efforts are done to continually improve the quality of the matrix or the fibres. Charging resin with nanoparticles is one of those approaches (improve of the matrix). These nanoparticles mostly consist of agglomerated dry powder. Their size, structure, strength as well as surface modification of aggregates and primary particles determine the application properties and significantly influence the dispersion of the aggregates. However, the fabrication and the mechanical properties of those so-called nanocomposites are still not completely understood. Especially the influence of dispersing conditions, particle structure (size, aggregate structure, surface roughness) and the role of the particle-resin interaction on the mechanical properties and shrinkage of the matrix is not known. Here the key parameters during the process consist of: emerged particle structures, stability of the dispersion, interactions as well as bindings between particles and resin. The endeavour and efficiency of dispersing nanoparticles in resin and thus the properties of the later nanocomposite are dependent on the particle synthesis, -modification, formulation and operating parameters while dispersing.As part of the Virtual Institute “Nanotechnology in Polymer Composites” the influence of dispersing techniques, formulation, properties of particles and functional groups on epoxy resin will be investigated. Additionally prognoses of later attributes should be given, which are based on dispersing parameters, kinematics of reactions, wetting, viscosity and particle size analysis.