Toughening of Dicy-Cured DGEBA based Epoxy Resins by using PEG

Epoxy resins are widely used in many applications, due to their appropriate material properties including excellent mechanical, electrical and chemical stability. However, theyare brittle and have poor resistance to crack growth. Therefore, many researchers have been carried out to enhance thetoughness of the cured epoxy resins without a significant loss in other properties [1,2]. One of the methods is to incorporate various amounts of a thermoplastic polymer into the epoxymatrix [3]. Among different thermoplastics, polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a semi-crystalline polymer and it has beenfound to be miscible with epoxy resins. According to ductile behaviour of pure PEG, the addition of this thermoplastic canimprove the toughening of epoxy resins. In this study, different mixtures of a diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA) epoxy resin and different amount of PEG cured with Dicyandiamide (Dicy) have been studied