SYNTHESIS & MECHANICAL PROPERTIES EVALUATION OF EPDM BASED ABLATIVE COMPOSITES

Abstract

Ablative materials are heat shielding, protective materials which are used in aerospace industry to protect inner hardware and sensitive devices. It is required to develop light weight material with high modulus. EPDM is the best candidate for the synthesis of ablative materials by introducing different heating sink such as silica, glass fiber, carbon fiber, asbestos and carbon and their combinations. The prepared materials were tested mechanically. It was found that tensile strength of materials containing carbon, carbon fiber, silica, asbestos was increased by increasing testing speed and decreased at the same speed, reverse behavior was observed in silica-glass fiber combination. In case of % Elongation, gradual decreasing behavior was observed with carbon, glass fiber and carbon fiber but there was opposite behavior in silica, glass fiber and carbon fiber. Rheological investigations of these novel composites shows that moony viscosity of the materials containing glass fiber, carbon fiber, silica decreased in that order. The tested materials are used in wide variety of ablative applications. Parallel testing of thermal properties are in progress.