Self-healing woven glass fabric/epoxy composites with the healant consisting of micro-encapsulated epoxy and latent curing agent

This paper reports a study of self-healing woven glass fabric reinforced epoxy composites. The healing agent was a two-component one synthesized in the authors' laboratory, which consisted of epoxy-loaded urea-formaldehyde microcapsules as the polymerizable binder and CuBr2(2-methylimidazole)(4)( CuBr2(2-MeIm)(4)) as the latent hardener. Both the microcapsules and the matching catalyst were pre-embedded and pre-dissolved in the composites' matrix, respectively. When the microcapsules are split by propagating cracks, the uncured epoxy can be released into the damaged areas and then consolidated under the catalysis of CuBr2(2-MeIm)(4) that was homogeneously distributed in the composites' matrix on a molecular scale. As a result, the cracked faces can be bonded together. The influence of the content of the self-healing agent on the composites' tensile properties, interlaminar fracture toughness and healing efficiency was evaluated. It was found that a healing efficiency over 70% relative to the fracture toughness of virgin composites was obtained in the case of 30 wt% epoxy-loaded microcapsules and 2 wt% latent hardener.