Toughened E-Beam Curable Resins for Low Cost, Rapidly Pultruded, Filament Wound and Resin Transfer Molded Composites

The objective of the proposed program is to demonstrate the feasibility of an innovative, cost-effective, rapid-pultrusion composite processing technique and newly formulated resins which substantially reduce the need for expensive tooling, high puller tensions (dies are expected to be an order of magnitude shorter than conventional pultrusion dies) and slow thermal processing and can cure the composite in seconds (compared to minutes for thermal systems for an expected order of magnitude increase in line speed) at ambient or subambient conditions. The matrix polymers that make graphite-composites manufactured using this process possible are based on electron-beam curing of low viscosity Epoxy Functionalized Siloxane (EFS) polymers that have been shown to resist atomic oxygen, while exhibiting excellent mechanical and physical properties. This resin can be specially formulated with other low cost resins, toughener thermoplastic powers, and a proprietary low-dose-to-cure catalyst to lower the resins cost as well as improve on the already tougher-than-epoxy, hydrophobic, high Tg (>250 C) properties of the base resign. These composites are designed to be environmentally and hygienically friendly and outperform composites produced by competing fabrication techniques.