Ultrasonic studies of fly ash/polyurea composites

Due to its excellent thermo-mechanical properties, polyurea is attracting more and more attention in blast-mitigating applications. In order to enhance its capability of blast-induced stress-wave management, we seek to develop polyurea-based composites in this work. Fly ash which consists of hollow particles with porous shell and low apparent density was chosen as filler and a series of fly ash/polyurea composites with various fly ash volume fractions were fabricated. The dynamic mechanical behavior of the composites was determined by a personal computer (PC) based ultrasonic system in the 0.5-2MHz frequency range between -60 degrees C to 30 degrees C temperatures. Velocity and attenuation of both longitudinal and shear ultrasonic waves were measured. The complex longitudinal and shear moduli were then computed from these measurements. Combining these results provided an estimate of the complex bulk and Young's moduli of the fly ash/polyurea composites at high frequencies. These results will be presented and compared with those of pure polyurea elastomer.