SCALE FACTOR IN AN EXPERIMENTAL-MODEL OF A HIGHLY REINFORCED COMPOSITE

Formation of shrinkage defects during isothermal curing of network pol ymers is considered. The cure was carried out under conditions of adhe sive interaction of the polymer matrix with the rigid filler present i n the composite. The dependence of the relative mean distance between cohesive defects on the tube diameter in the tube model developed earl ier was investigated over more than two orders of magnitude of tube di ameters. This distance was found to be constant in the range considere d. A similar process of shrinkage defect formation was observed for a plate model.