Introduction
Polyurethanes refer to large family of thermosets used in a wide range of applications. Like with other polymers, the introduction of glass fibres will provide to the material significant performance improvement like:
* An increase the mechanical properties
* An improvement of the HDT
* A reduction of creep under continuous loading
* Formulation cost savings by partial replacement of diisocyanate with glass fibres (at the same stiffness).
In foamed materials the main difficulty is to combine the benefits of expanded materials and glass fibre reinforcement. The main issues are:
* The modification of the rheology
* The risk of anisotropy by the fibre orientation and settling
* The need to use abrasion resistant materials for the equipment parts exposed to the reinforced polyurethane
* The special design of the equipment to eliminate or reduce settling of the fibres and abrasion wear.
In this paper, SpecialChem is proposing you an overview on benefits of glass fibre in polyurethanes.