Investigation of fire resistance and mechanical properties of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polyester composites in the presence of nanoclay, magnesium hydroxide, aluminum hydroxide, zinc oxide

Nowadays Polymer Matrix Composites are replaced by metal as composite structures in petroleum industry due to their lightness and high strength ratio. Usually, the resin used to make these composite structures is a polyester resin and because of the use of this resin, in addition to its good physical and chemical properties, its price is lower than other resins. but one of the disadvantages of polyester composites is to expose it and to create a hazard in the petrochemical and refinery industries. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, four anti-inflammatory filler materials, including nanoclay with a weight percentage of 1,2,3%, aluminum hydroxide with a weight of 2,5,7,10%, magnesium hydroxide with a weight percentage of 2, 5,10,15% and zinc oxide with a weight percentage of 1,3,5,7%. In this research, the resistance to fire extinguishing by combustibility test (burning rate) and mechanical properties of composite by using tensile, hardness and impact tests is investigated. Finally, by comparing and checking the results, it was found that with 2% nanoclay weight, the maximum tensile strength, 58.33% improvement and with 39.11% hardness of glass / polyester composite would be improved. Also, by adding 2 wt% magnesium hydroxide, the impact strength is improved by 125%, and by adding 5% by weight of aluminum hydroxide, the burning rate of glass / polyester composite is reduced by 59.12%. It is the cause of the burning down rate in the sample containing aluminum hydroxide due to the reaction of hot forming and the release of water molecules.