Toughening of fibre composite resins

This project has supported the Queensland Government's priority of diversifying and strengthening rural and regional economies through productivity and growth of alternative non-food oilseeds for the production of composite resins. This has been achieved by delivering the following outputs:

identifying suitable species for oil extraction. (To be delivered by USQ, LOC Composites Pty Ltd, DEEDI, and EPA.)
matching species to environment. (To be delivered by DEEDI, and EPA.)
assessing the quality of the oils for resin production. (To be delivered by USQ, and LOC Composites Pty.)
developing an initial cost benefit analysis for the use of non-food oils for resin production. (To be delivered by I&BI.)

Previous research work undertaken in the last couple of years in the Labs of the CEEFC demonstrated that epoxidised plant oils can be blended at up to 20-30% into conventional epoxy resins without a significant loss of mechanical properties. The next stage of this work has concentrated on increasing the percentage of vegetable oil based products able to be successfully blended into conventional resins. It has been shown that these epoxidised oils can be converted to toughening additives able to be incorporated into conventional epoxy resins or epoxy based adhesives. Mechanical and thermal testing has shown that these epoxidised oil based additives offer comparable toughening performance to the widely-used toughening additives, at a much reduced overall cost.

Project partners

Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation (DEEDI)
LOC Composites

CEEFC Project coordinator

Dr Francisco Cardona