Interlaminar fracture of composites made by thermo-reversible epoxy

Composite materials are ideal candidates for structural applications due to high specific stiffness and strength and their excellent fatigue resistance. However, there are still concerns regarding their fracture toughness performance. In this paper, an epoxy based system has been synthetized containing D-A adducts. The recovery capability has been proved by morphological study on damaged samples. Mechanical tests performed on virgin and self-healed system revealed the ability to recover efficiently the pristine stiffness, triggering from ductile to fragile the failure of the epoxy matrix. The synthesised system (2Ph2Epo65 D-A epoxy) lead to the fabrication of carbon fiber reinforced polymer that exhibits repeatable healing. Furthermore the self-healing polymer was processed through typical commercial resin infusion processes thus allowing them to be applied in the manufacture of composites with both shape and strength recovery.