FTIR Analysis and Rheological Behavior of Bisphenol: A Diglycidyl Ether Resin Filled Fume-Silica

Silica-fume as fillers into polymers materials affect significantly the physical, mechanical and the electrical properties of the polymers. The polymer that we studied here is an epoxy based resin (STR) and silica fume (FS). This paper presents the dependency of the rheological behavior of the STR epoxy resin on the FS content within a temperature at which the reaction thermoset is neglected. We used a cone-plate viscometer for the study of the rheological behavior, and a scanning electron microscope is used for the analysis of the dispersion state of the FS in STR epoxy resin. Compared to the control without loads, an increase of 50% of the shear stress and the plastic viscosity were recorded for the composite. The software Rheowine viscometer enabled us to model and identified the rheological behavior of these mixtures with resin. The results obtained in this modeling, confirmed that the resin mixtures have shear-thinning rheological behavior, this last give us the model of Ostwald de Waele.