Glass fiber fabrics/hollow glass microspheres (HGM)-waterborne polyurethane (WPU) textile composites were prepared using glass fiber, WPU, and HGM as skeleton material, binder, and insulation filler, respectively, to study the effect of HGM on the thermal insulation performance of glass fiber fabrics. Scanning electron microscopy, Instron 3367 tensile test instrument, thermal constant analysis, and infrared thermal imaging were used to determine the cross-sectional morphology, mechanical property, thermal conductivity, and thermal insulation property, respectively, of the developed materials. The results show that the addition of HGM mixed in WPU significantly enhanced thermal insulation performance of the textile composite with the reduction of thermal conductivity of 45.2% when the volume ratio of HGM to WPU is 0.8 compared with that of material without HGM. The composite can achieve the thermal insulation effect with a temperature difference of 17.74 °C at the temperature field of 70 °C. Meanwhile, the tensile strength of the composite is improved from 14.16 to 22.14 MPa. With these results, it is confirmed that designing hollow glass microspheres (HGM) is an effective way to develop and enhance the high performance of insulation materials with an obvious lightweight of the bulk density reaching about 50%.
Keywords: composites; glass fiber fabric; hollow glass microsphere (HGM); thermal insulation.