A Review on Epoxy Polymer Matrix Composite, Its Mechanical and Thermal Properties

This paper is a concrete review on Polymer matrix composite materials and gives the reason why researchers are often attracted to the world of composite materials. Here we focus mostly on the fields of application of Polymer Matrix Composites (PMCs) and Polymers used in PMCs. Another objective of this state of art review is to study about the composite materials, its classification, application, and a comparative study of mechanical properties of metallic and composite materials. Here we carried out a detailed study on different types if reinforcement fibers of polymer matrix for tribological application. The increasing demand of high strength and light weight components has enhanced the use of E-glass composite in recent years. E-glass composite has been found extremely useful in many applications due to their strength, ease of processing, lightness, and availability. Number of industrial applications of E-glass composite can be found in automotive sector such as car body, brake pads, drive shaft, fuel tank, hoods etc., aerospace filed, sports equipment and manufacturing industries etc. The behavior of E-glass composite is governed by various mechanical and thermal properties. One can achieves variation in density, specific wear rate by altering orientation of the fibers and volume percentage of filler material as well as young’s modulus of the composite can also be altered with change in volume percentage of the filler material. On the other hand, thermal properties like thermal conductivity can be improved with increase in EGF content and specific heat capacity can also be increased with increase in temperature. Therefore, it has been proposed to select E-glass composite with brass filler for study. From the literature it has been found that there is scope of achieving better properties of E-glass composite by changing filler volume percentage and by changing grain size of the filler.