Improved hydrothermal aging performance of glass fiber‐reinforced polymer composites via silica nanoparticle coating

ABSTRACT The long‐term exposure to a hot and humid environment severely damages the bonding integrity of fiber‐reinforced polymer composites and thus significantly degrades their mechanical performances. In this work, we aim to develop an improvement procedure for effectively enhancing the bonding strength in glass fiber‐reinforced polymers (GFRPs). Glass fibers were coated with a thin layer of silica nanoparticles of different concentrations by the use of the evaporative deposition method. Micromorphological comparisons in terms of scanning electron microscope imaging demonstrate significant improvements on the surface roughness of glass fibers. With the coated glass fibers, GFRP composite laminates were designed, molded through the vacuum‐assisted resin infusion technique, and experimentally tested for quantitatively studying their hydrothermal aging performance. The water absorption tests conducted for three exposure temperatures suggest that both the water diffusion rate and the equilibrium water content can be effectively reduced due to the introduction of the silica coating. With increased exposure temperatures, however, the desired reductions become much less significant. A so‐called water‐channel diffusion mechanism along fiber/resin interfaces was proposed to explain the coupling effects of silica coating and exposure temperature. Reductions of water diffusion rate and equilibrium water content were expected to slow down the hydrothermal aging performance of GFRPs. For this purpose, both uniaxial tensile test and three‐point bending test were subsequently performed on GFRP specimens that have been subjected to different coating concentrations, exposure temperatures, and exposure durations. When compared with untreated GFRP specimens, both experiments demonstrate that the residual strength and stiffness can be effectively promoted through coating a thin layer of silica nanoparticles on glass fiber surfaces. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019, 137, 48652.