Hollow Glass Microspheres in Thermosets—Epoxy Syntactic Foams

Rapid growth in applications of syntactic foams in transportation and oil industry has motivated research and development activities in polymer matrix syntactic foams. While a wide range of matrix and particle materials have been used in fabricating syntactic foams, this chapter specifically focuses on the properties of epoxy matrix glass hollow particle-filled syntactic foams. Among mechanical properties, tensile, compressive, and flexural properties are discussed. In addition, dielectric and thermal properties are also discussed. Data on these properties have been extracted from all available studies and compared with respect to the syntactic foam density to identify the common trends. All these properties of syntactic foams can be tailored either by the hollow particle volume fraction or by the wall thickness. The possibility of using these two parameters independently enables developing syntactic foams with two or more properties tailored at the same time. Such possibility allows developing multifunctional syntactic foams and tailoring their properties for a wide range of applications.