Fire resistant organic composite materail

Vinylester resin is the workhorse of the boat and marine industry. This family of resin is low in cost, low in viscosity, chemically resistant, and possesses a cure cycle that ranges from room temperature for methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) peroxide to dicumyl peroxide for elevated cure vinylester . As versitile as these family of resins are, they do suffer shortcomings. Vinylester resins exposed to fire insult exhibit severe structural degradation and off gassing of toxic fumes. Unfortunately, current fire protection schemes have resulted in very complicated, very costly, approaches for utilizing composite materials in Navy topside designs. Innovative approaches are needed to advance the current state-of-the-art for vinylester- like resin systems to provide the Navy with a cost effective, certified material system with broad capability to emerging Naval applications. The innovation prosented in this proposal is to develop a resin system utilizing proprietary formulation approached that will produce a fire retardant resin system, with vinylester characteristics, for a cost less than $10/lb. This Phase I program will measure the neat resin mechanical, fire response and electrical characteristics, fabricate fiberglass composite panels using a VARTM (SCRIMP) process and measure the resulting mechanical, electric, and fire resistance characteristics of the composite panels.