Strength Characteristics of Polymer Composites Filled with Coarse and Macro Particles with Different Types of Disperse Structure

This paper reports some data on the effect of the type of disperse structure and the sizes of particles (coarse and macro particles) on the strength characteristics of disperse-filled polymer composites (DFPCs) based on polymer matrices of different nature (thermoplastics and thermosets). In this study, the types of disperse structure were calculated using a generalized model of the DFPC structure in terms of generalized (Θ) and reduced (Θ/В, Θ/Sf) parameters, which made it possible to estimate the effect of the parameters and type of disperse structure on the strength properties of DFPCs containing fillers with various particle sizes. It was shown that, when designing the composition of DFPCs with macro and coarse disperse particles for both thermoplastics and thermosets in the region of diluted systems (volume fraction Θ > 0.90), the strength remains almost equal to that of the polymer matrix. When creating low-filled systems (0.90 > Θ > 0.75), the strength decreases by 10–15% in comparison with the polymer matrix at a filler volume fraction φf up to 0.14.