Effect of particle size on fracture toughness of spherical-silica particle filled epoxy composites

We investigated the particle size effects on the fracture toughness of epoxy resin composites reinforced with spherical-silica particles. The silica particles had different mean particle diameters of between 1.56 and 0.24 mu m and were filled with bisphenol A-type epoxy resin under different mixture ratios of small and large particles and a constant volume fraction for all particles of 0.30. As the content with the added smaller particle increased, the viscosity of each composite before curing remarkably increased. We conducted the single edge notched bending test (SENB) to measure the mode I fracture toughness of each composite. The fracture surface with the small particle content exhibited more rough areas than the surface with larger particles. The fracture toughness increased below the small particle content of 0.8 and saturated above it. Therefore, near the small particle content of 0.8, the composite had a relatively low viscosity and a high fracture toughness.