The strategy of combining the traditional reinforcement of glass fibers (GF) with lighter hollow glass microspheres can afford to fulfill the need for potential light-weight and high-strength modern materials required in various sectors, such as automotive and aerospace industry applications. This work fabricated composites of PA6/GF/hollow glass microspheres by melting blending in a co-rotating twin-screw extruder, and subsequently, injection molded.
The effects of hollow glass microspheres content on the density, morphological and mechanical properties were investigated and the PA6/GF/hollow glass microspheres composites properties were compared to the properties of the traditional PA6/GF (70/30) wt% composite, widely used today in automotive industries.
With the increase of hollow glass microspheres amount in the formulations, a reduction of between 3 and 12% in density was achieved with a slight reduction in its mechanical properties, showing that this new strategy can be applied to replace the PA6/GF (70/30) wt% composite, providing a considerable weight reduction for these materials.