Preliminary Study on a High Strength Nanoclay/Epoxy Coating for Ocean Engineering Applications

Abstract:

Due to excellent property enhancement and the versatile application in automotive, aeropspace and ocean engineering applications, research in nanoclay related polymer composites has been a hot topic in the past few years. It is believed that the use of this material to form composites is able to enhance the mechanical, thermal and electrical properties of Polyurethane (PU), Polyester (PE) and Epoxy. However, these composites have only achieved a small strength increment that is below expected potential. For making anti-foulng coatig materials for ocean engineeirng applications, the difficulties are on how to produce uniformly-dispersed nanoclay/polymer composites and avoid clustering effect. In this project, a new experiment setup is proposed to mix nanoclay and epoxy together to form uniformly-dispersed nano-sized nanoclay cluster/epoxy composites. In the experiment, it was found that the micro-hardness of the composites (with 5 wt.% of nanoclay) increased up to 50% under a controlled spinning, curing time and temperature environment.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volumes 47-50)
• Pages: 1217-1220
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.47-50.1217
• Online since: June 2008
• Authors: Mo Lin Chan, Kin Tak Lau, Mei Po Ho, Tsun Tat Wong, Yan Shang Yin
• Keywords: Mechanical Property, Nanoclay, Nanocomposite

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