Effect of carbon fiber reinforcement on the compressive and thermal properties of hollow glass microspheres/epoxy syntactic foam.

Syntactic foams with high strength and light weight are essential for aerospace and deep sea explorations. In this study, high-performance carbon fiber/hollow glass microspheres/epoxy syntactic foams were prepared, and the reinforcing mechanism of carbon fiber is discussed. The syntactic foam with 3 wt% short carbon fiber achieves a uniaxial compressive strength of 141.7 MPa, which is among the highest values reported in the literature. The thermal conductivity of syntactic foam increased by 66.7% with the addition of 3 wt% short carbon fibers, which helped to control the cracking issue caused by the inner temperature surge during the curing process. Further stress characterizations using fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) confirmed that carbon fiber can relieve the evolution of thermal stress and reduce the residual thermal stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]