Industrial Materials and Testing Safety: Be careful with the resin/hardener chemical reaction, which is an exothermic reaction, and place any mixing container only in a non-flammable area. Treat all mixing containers as potentially a fire hazard and also a hazardous waste until it is fully cured. Do not touch skin while handling resins. Lab write-up: Answer the following questions: What classification of plastics is the epoxy? What happened when the hardener (i.e., catalyst) was mixed with the epoxy resin? What type of polymer structure (i.e., group of polymer chains) is the epoxy? What type of hybrid composite is this? What was the best technique for getting air bubble out of the layup? Why should you have gloves on first before handling the fiber glass woven cloth? If you wanted to fabricate a composite material to have higher stiffness, what would the resin to reinforcement ratio be (i.e., more resin or more reinforcement - 40% resin to 60% reinforcement, etc.)? Explain your answer.
Epoxy polymers
1. Epoxy polymers are resins in plastics. Classified under thermosetting polymers. They are widely ued for the manufacture of electrical and electronic equipments.
2. The hardners are added to get a crosslinked epoxy polymeric material.
3. Epoxy polymers have an epoxide group in its structure.
4. The composite material is thermosetting in nature.
5. The methods employed for removing any entrapped air bubble is rolling bubble by a hand tool or brushing with an paintbrush.
6. Fibre glass and similar have minute sharp fibres that may easily pierce through the skin If gloves are not worn. To avoid such an accident it is recommended to wear gloves all the time.
7. For higher stiffness composite material we would use a greater percent of reinforcement in the resin combination.
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