Measurement of Interfacial Adhesion in Glass-Epoxy Systems Using the Indentation Method

The adhesion of coatings often controls the performance of the substrate-coating system. Certain engineering applications require an epoxy coating on a brittle substrate to protect and improve the performance of the substrate. Experimental observations and measurements of interfacial adhesion in glass-epoxy systems are described in this thesis. A comparison study of how different glass treatments affect adhesion was also conducted: smooth versus rough, clean versus unclean, stressed versus non-stressed. The Oliver and Pharr method was utilized to calculate the bulk epoxy hardness and elastic modulus. Spherical indentations were used to induce delaminations at the substrate-coating interface. The delamination sizes as a function of load were used to calculate the interfacial toughness. The interfacial fracture energy of my samples is an order of magnitude higher than a previous group who studied a similar glass-epoxy system.Sandia National LaboratoriesMechanical EngineeringMastersUniversity of New Mexico. Dept. of Mechanical EngineeringKhraishi, TariqTehrani, MehranTandon, Raja