Surface Energy of Glass Fibers and Their Wetting Properties with Different Resins

Using a new dynamic wetting method based on Wilhelmy plate principle combining with thermodynamic OWRK principle, the surface free energy and its polar component and dispersion component of different kinds of glass fiber were calculated, and the contact angles between glass fiber and resin were measured to analyze the matching performance of wetting for the glass fiber and resin systems. The results show that the surface energy order of glass fibers from high to low was EY, YET, JY, TYM, ERY, ECY. The contact angles between the glass fibers and CYD128 epoxy were relatively large, showing a poor wettability. However, the the contact angles between the glass fibers and 760E epoxy were relatively small, indicating a good wettability. For the same kind of resin, ERY, EY and EYT exhibited good wettability; but TYM, ECY and JY exhibited poor wettability.