A Direct Comparison of the Fragmentation Test and the Microbond Pull-out Test for Determining the Interfacial Shear Strength

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Abstract
Experiments were conducted to compare the fragmentation test with the microbond pull-out test for determining the interfacial shear strength between carbon AS4 fibers and a thermoset matrix consisting of a Di-Glycidyl Ether of Bisphenol A (DGEBA) resin cured with a diamine (meta-phenylenediamine, m-PDA) curing agent. The results indicate that, for the microbond test, diffusion of the rather volatile m-PDA curing agent at early stages of cure leads to low values of interfacial shear strengths when compared with results obtained for the same system with the fragmentation test. With the microbond test, a distinct relationship between the glass transition temperature of the droplets and their size is noticed. Smaller (< 150 μm) droplets have very low Tg's and are incompletely cured. While changing to a modified curing cycle and/or using a m-PDA-rich curing environment alleviates the diffusion problem, the interfacial shear strength values are still not in good agreement with the fragmentation test results. Microbond data from another system consisting of DGEBA resin cured with a different, less volatile dimaine curing agent indicates that diffusion of the curing agent becomes less severe as the volatility of the curing agent decreases and the corresponding microbond interfacial shear strengths agree better with fragmentation test results.