نبذة مختصرة : Nowadays, silica aerogels have been widely used in many applications due totheirextremely low density, low thermal conductivity and high specific surface area. Manyresearchers have proved that the addition of the nanoparticles into thermoset polymers resin has influenced the mechanical properties of the composites. Epoxy resins are one of the mostlyused thermoset polymers. Although they have superior mechanical strength, they are usually suffered from their fragile structure. There are several additives such as carbon nanotubes, nanoclay, calcite etc. that can be added to epoxy resins to enhance their mechanical properties such as tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, break strain. In this study, the silica aerogelswereadded as nano-fillersinto epoxy to investigate the effect of the silica aerogel content on the mechanical performance ofsilicaaerogel–epoxycomposites.Twodifferentsilicaaerogel–epoxy composites were producedwith various silica aerogel content(0.5 and 1 wt. %) and effect of aerogel amount on the mechanical and structural properties of final nanocomposites wasinvestigated.Silicaaerogelsusedinthestudyweresynthesized bytraditionalsol gel method to obtain versatile silica aerogel–epoxy composites. Apart from the classically synthesized silica aerogels, aerogels in the present study containshort chained ionic liquid(IL)as porogenic agents. The effect of the addition of the silica aerogel on the tensile and flexural propertiesof final compositeswere observed by the measurement of the tension and three-point bending tests, respectively according to ASTM standard. The results have shownthatthemechanical behavioroftheepoxyresinwassignificantly influenced by the silica aerogel addition. The mechanical strength of epoxy composite with silica aerogel addition was improved compared to that ofthe neatepoxy.
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