Silicon rubber/hollow glass microsphere composites: Influence of broken hollow glass microsphere on mechanical and thermal insulation property

Hollow glass microsphere (HGM), as one kind of novel inorganic material, is widely used. Its most obvious feature is the hollow structure which brings excellent heat isolation property and light density. However in practice, the fracture of the HGM is inevitable and there are no enough systematic studies about the influence of broken HGM as filler right now, moreover it is not easy to detect the percentage of broken HGM in products either. In this work, the matrix is silicon rubber (SR) and the filler is the mixture of different ratio of intact and broken HGM. Such properties of the composite materials, like the density, the mechanical property and thermal conductivity, are detected. It turns out with the increase of broken HGM, the density, thermal conductivity and the mechanical property enhance too. And by comparing such data of another composite material, whose ratio of broken HGM is unknown, with previous data, the percentage of broken HGM in that material would be estimated. And it is supported by following experiments.