Effect of particle surface treatment and blending method on flexural properties of injection-molded cenosphere/HDPE syntactic foams

The present work on cenosphere/high-density polyethylene (HDPE) syntactic foams aims at understanding the effect of surface treatment of cenospheres and functionalization of HDPE on flexural properties. Cenospheres are treated with silane, and HDPE is functionalized with 10 % dibutyl maleate. Effects of mechanical and Brabender mixing methods are also studied. Flexural test specimens are cast with 20, 40, and 60 wt% of cenospheres using injection molding. The flexural modulus and strength are found to increase with increasing cenosphere content. Particle breakage increases with the cenosphere content, and the measured properties show increased dependence on processing method. Brabender mixing resulted in 70 and 41 % higher modulus and strength for 60 wt% cenospheres than HDPE. Modulus of syntactic foams is predicted by two theoretical models. Bardella-Genna model provides close estimates for syntactic foams having 20 and 40 wt% cenospheres, while predictions are higher for higher cenosphere content, likely due to particle breakage during processing. The uncertainty in the properties of cenospheres due to defects contributes to the variation in the predicted values.