Alternative Room Temperature Cure and VARTMable High Temperature Resin Systems for Large Scale Composite Ship Component Manufacturing

This Phase I STTR proposal is to designed to utilize the fundamental properties of POSS® nanotechnology to provide a new higher Tg and fracture toughness ambient cure epoxy matrix for use in Vacuum Assist Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM) manufacturing. Nanostructured ambient cure epoxy matrices based upon Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxanes (POSS®) will be reinforced with carbon-fiber and glass-fiber reinforcement packages using VARTM processing with no post curing to determine physical properties. The technical approaches proposed in this work focus on the synthesis and formulation of epoxy resins with nanostructured entities in order to provide elevated glass-transition, mechanical performance, reduced viscosity, and VARTM processability, relative to existing commercial ambient cure epoxy systems. POSS® type nanocomposite reinforcements increase the Tg of polymeric resins by reducing chain motions through increased chain rigidity. POSS will be utilized in this research through two primary mechanisms: (i) POSS cages that contain catalytic metals and functional groups that enhance the extent of curing for epoxy resins beyond that normally realized at ambient conditions and (ii) replacement of specific portions of epoxy monomers with POSS functional epoxides.BENEFITS: The proposed formulations will present the opportunity to study the effects that nanoreinforcement has on the glass transition and key physical properties of epoxy-type nanocomposites. The result enable an ambient cure low-viscosity epoxy that has high Tg, high fracture toughness, excellent fiber adhesion, improved flame resistance and that can be manufactured using conventional wet lay-up processing technology including VARTM. The resin will have direct commercial us by the Naval fleet, and as solid rocket motor case, and as encapsulants and underfill resins for commercial electronics.