TY - JOUR A2 - Yeung, Kelvin AU - Sosa, Edward D. AU - Darlington, Thomas K. AU - Hanos, Brian A. AU - O’Rourke, Mary Jane E. PY - 2015 DA - 2015/02/04 TI - Microwave Assisted Healing of Thermally Mendable Composites SP - 248490 VL - 2015 AB - Polymer matrix composites offer high specific strength; however, their potential weight savings have been limited by the concern of damage tolerance. If microcracking and similar incurred damage could be autonomously sealed, composite structures could be built thinner and lighter while still addressing damage tolerance, thus achieving the weight savings they promise. Various self-healing mechanisms have been proposed to this end. Herein, a method of thermally reversible polymerization is investigated. To date, thermally activated repair of composites have been accomplished typically through resistive heating, which has certain inherent complexities. An alternate heating method, via microwave exposure of carbon nanotubes incorporated throughout a thermal reversible polymer matrix, is demonstrated. Carbon nanotube-doped composites exhibit enhanced microwave absorption over an undoped control sample. Furthermore, it is shown that these composites can be heated locally by a focused microwave source. The particular composite formulation and layup studied could be uniformly heated to the targeted healing temperature of 100°C in as little as 20 seconds, followed by a healing time on the scale of minutes with total time depending upon the extent of damage. SN - 2090-3561 UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/248490 DO - 10.1155/2015/248490 JF - Smart Materials Research PB - Hindawi Publishing Corporation KW - ER -