Mechanical Properties of Hybrid Glass Micro balloons/Fly Ash Cenosphere Filled Vinyl Ester Matrix Syntactic Foams

Syntactic foams are synthesized by using pre-fabricated hollow microspheres. Syntactic foams are used as energy absorption sandwich core for several applications like marine, automotive and aerospace. Properties of syntactic foam can be tailored by addition of filler material. In this work hybrid syntactic foam is fabricated by addition of two types of filler materials that are hollow glass microballoons and fly ash cenosphere into vinyl ester matrix at different concentration. The volume fraction of filler content with respect to matrix is fixed to 50% and composition of two fillers varied. Hybridization of two different types of ceramic microballoons in vinyl ester matrix gives maximum 9.58% improvement in impact strength with respect to plane hollow glass microsphere syntactic foam. Enhancement in flexural strength and Flexural modulus observed is 27.7% and 27.16% respectively as compared to plane hollow glass microsphere syntactic foam. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.