Fabrication and characterization of the thermoplastic and thermoset syntactic foam core-based sandwich composites

This study focuses on the preparation and characterization of two types of syntactic foams with the raw materials of hollow glass microspheres, polypropylene, and epoxy resin. The thermoset resin-based and thermoplastic resin-based syntactic foam slabs were produced and then used as the core material to fabricate thin-layer sandwich composites. The carbon/epoxy composites were used as skins. The tensile properties and the fracture surface of the syntactic foams were observed. The bonding performance between the laminations and bending strength of the sandwich composites were investigated. The results show that both the thermoplastic resin-based and thermosetting resin-based syntactic foam slabs can be well bonded with the skins. The densities of the sandwich composites are 1.06 and 1.04 g/cm³, respectively. The sandwich composites have a good performance in bending resistance and the flexural strengths are 473.0 and 627.7 MPa, respectively.