Synthesis of polymer composites using cryogenic grinding and study of their mechanical characteristics and theoretical calculations for neutron-protective parameters

The article deals with the problems of creating composite materials for neutron shielding. A method for creating a composite material is proposed and described based on polyethylene and B4C boron carbide. For the first time, the possibility of synthesizing composites of the proposed composition using cryogenic grinding under low-temperature processing conditions was established in this article. The main physical-mechanical, thermal and neutron-protective properties of the composite material were studied depending on the content of B4C. A composite containing 30% boron carbide synthesized using cryogenic grinding has the following mechanical characteristics: flexural strength - 5.96 MPa, flexural strain at flexural strength 8.56 %, Vickers microhardness, 7.7 ± 0.8 HV200.