Epoxy Tests

To test whether the fibers could be protected from the damage from ethanol, the ends of fibers were covered with Saint Gobain's BC-600 fiber cement. The instructions for use and more information on BC-600 can be found here.

Tips on epoxy use and other test procedures can be found here.

Data

This is a graph of the results from Epoxy Test 1 and it's respective Alcohol Test. This test was run for 24 hours in room temperature conditions. The red data points are the fibers which were not epoxied. The blue data points are the fibers which were coated in BC-600. The epoxied fibers had a smaller change in fiber size, but also experienced their greatest change around the 75%-85% concentration.

Here is a photo of fiber 5 from the Epoxy Test 1. The fiber's cladding is noticeably damaged.

This is a plot of Epoxy Test 2, where the epoxied fibers rested for 5 days in room temperature water. Again, the epoxied fiber data is blue, and it is plotted against the non-epoxied red data. Here, the epoxied fibers actually had a greater change in fiber width than the non-epoxied fibers after the 70% mark.

After four days, photographs were taken of the fibers while still in their vials. The most of the fibers' epoxy were coming off as seen in the photograph above of fiber 8.

Here is the final photo of fiber 3. The cladding is extremely rippled, and the epoxy seems to be coming off on the right end.

Here is the final photo of fiber 5. The cladding here seems completely opaque.

In Epoxy Test 3, the epoxied fibers were placed in heated ethanol. They were placed in concentrations of 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%, and 75% ethanol because these were the concentrations where the most severe damage occurred for the non-epoxied heated ethanol tests. The epoxied fibers of test 3 are represented in the plot above with large blue triangles, and the rest of the data, despite color, is from the previous heated alcohol tests. Here, as seen in Epoxy Test 2, the epoxied fibers had a greater change in fiber width than the non-epoxied fibers.

This is fiber 5 from Epoxy Test 3. The cladding here looks rippled, almost bubbly.

Here is fiber 10 from Epoxy Test 3. The cladding does not look anything like fiber 5. The epoxy on this fiber also appears to be peeling off at the ends.

This is a photograph of the vials from Epoxy Test 3 in order of their ethanol concentrations. The concentrations are as follows: 55%, 55%, 60%, 60%, 65%, 65%, 70%, 70%, 75%, 75%.