Effects of the type of processing on thermal, morphological and acoustic properties of syntactic foams

Abstract

Thermoplastic syntactic foams are composites made from the mixture of hollow glass microspheres (MOV) and polymer matrices and exhibit low density, recyclability and higher mechanical properties. In this work, syntactic foams based on high density Polyethylene (HDPE), hollow glass microspheres with percentages of 1 and 5%, and Polyethylene-graft-maleic anhydride (PE-g-MA) were prepared by three different processing routes (single screw extruder, twin screw extruder and internal mixer) and characterized in terms of morphology (SEM), thermal behavior (TG, DSC), density and sound absorption. In general, the insertion of hollow glass microspheres promoted the increase of thermal stability, reduction of density and increase in the sound absorption coefficient, being these properties influenced by the processing route and percentage of microspheres that also promoted changes in the morphology of the systems.