9. Fracture and toughening behavior of Aramid fiber/epoxy composites.Wang L, Tjiu WC, Teh SF, He CB, Liu TX*. POLYMER COMPOSITES 26 (3): 333-342 JUN 2005.
The effect of short Aramid fibers on the fracture and toughening behavior of epoxy with high glass transition temperature has been studied. Fine dispersion of the fibers throughout the matrix is evidenced by optical microscopy. Compared with neat epoxy resin, the fracture toughness (K-IC) of the composites steadily increases with increasing fiber loading, indicating that addition of Aramid fibers has an effective toughening effect to the intrinsically brittle epoxy matrix. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) indicates that formation of numerous step structures for fiber-filled epoxy systems is responsible for the significant toughness improvement. SEM and transmitted optical microscopy show that fiber pullout and fiber breakage are the main toughening mechanisms for the Aramid fiber/epoxy composites.