Effect of Clay Nanoparticles’ Addition on Hardness and Thermal Behavior of Hollow PMMA Microspheres/Unsaturated Polyester Syntactic Foam

Abstract- In the present research, the effect of clay nanoparticles’ addition on the thermal stability and hardness of the hybrid syntactic foams was studied. Morphology of the foam samples containing different wt % clay nanoparticles was determined using SAX. The thermal stability of foam samples containing 5 wt % of microspheres and 0, 1, 2 and 3 wt % of clay nanoparticles was evaluated using TGA. Rockwell hardness of samples was also measured according to ASTM D 785. The SAX analysis revealed exfoliated morphology for nano-clay platelets in foam sample containing 1 wt % nanoparticles, and it was changed to intercalated morphology, by increasing nanoparticles’ content. TGA results and hardness measurements revealed enhancing thermal stability and hardness of 1 wt % nano-clay embedded foam samples. Further increasing nanoparticles’ content had no significant effect on hardness value changes; however TGA study showed decreasing of thermal stability –still over than neat sample - with increasing nano-clay content. Keywords - , , , .