Aerogel/epoxy thermal coatings for carbon fibre reinforced plastic substrates

Abstract

The present work studies an aerogel/epoxy composite that was dip coated onto a carbon fibre substrate by adding the aerogel at the 1 h and the 1.5 mark of the epoxy cure. Both coatings show decrease in thermal conductivity values (39% and 47% respectively) when compared to a pure epoxy coating. The coatings’ reflectance spectra also provided further evidence for the existence of the nano-pores within the aerogel particles. The aerogel coating was modelled using material properties from literature and solved using finite element methods. The model, which validated using experimental data, was then used to predict the coating’s performance in cyclic thermal loads. Additionally, coatings on a single surface- top and bottom; were also modelled and compared with the double coating system wherein it was seen that the double coating system had the lowest rate of temperature change and fluctuations at steady-state in contrast to the bottom coating which, showed the fastest drop in temperature as well as the highest fluctuations at steady state conditions. The performance of the top coating was in the middle.

Keywords:

• Aerogel
• composites
• thermal coatings
• finite element modelling
• epoxy

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mr. Jim Hurley, Mr. Andrew Stallard and Dr. Debabrata Bhattacharyya for assistance in the preparation of samples and equipment setup.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.