Author Archives: aerontec

Polyurethane Foam

This is a family of materials which includes both rigid and flexible materials, a great many choices of density and several different chemical versions. In the composites realm, we only use the rigid foams. Clark foam was used widely for manufacturing surf boards, but is not offered as a precision sliced material for use in […]

Polystyrene Foam

This is the material used in aircraft wings and control surfaces, as well as surfboards. It was chosen because its strength properties are well matched to the need of these particular structures, and because it can be hot-wire contoured without generating poisonous gases. It has the strong disadvantage of being soluble in Styrene monomer, which […]

Syntactic Foam

The word “syntactic” simply means that the foam is made by mixing micro balloons, ceramic spheres, or other lightweight aggregate, with a resin system. This results in the density of the material before cure being the same as the density after cure. This is different from most other foams, which are expanded during cure to […]

Foam Cores

A number of foamed plastic materials are widely used in boat hulls, as well as in home- built aircraft. They are a bit higher in cost, but are lighter and easy to work with. Each of these material families has a set of mechanical properties, physical properties, working and handling characteristics, and a cost structure […]

Aramid Fibres

Aromatic polyamides (polyparaphenylene terephthalamide) as reinforcing fibres are characterised by very high tensile strength and modulus, low density and good heat resistance. In composite form they outperform glass fibres on these properties when compared on an equal volume-fraction-of-reinforcement basis. Compressive strength, however, is much lower for aramid reinforced composites. Machining (sawing, drilling, grinding) of aramid […]