The research on vibration damping of epoxy resins holds great potential, as it addresses

the ongoing risks posed by vibration environments to the maintainability and suitability

of materials in diverse applications. The addition of fillers emerges as a key method

to transform epoxy resin properties, offering potential benefitsts.

This research focused on zirconium tungstate, a ceramic powder with a negative

thermal expansion coefficient. It was meticulously added to three epoxy resins, each based

on a bisphenol A diglycidyl ether epoxy and three different amine hardeners. The zirconium

tungstate was introduced in varying percentages (0.1, 0.5, and 1 wt.%) to the epoxies,

and the effects on the epoxies' thermal expansion, glass transition, and vibration damping

properties were rigorously studied in both low-frequency and high-frequency domains, up to

2KHz.

The glass transition temperature of the epoxies showed a decreasing trend with increasing

filler percentage, which is a typical finding when adding fillers to epoxy resins. The

thermal expansion coefficient (CTE) provided interesting results. There are two CTEs for

the epoxy resins. One below and one above the glass transition (Tg), the CTE below Tg

highlight a suppression of the epoxies CTE, however above Tg, the CTE increased with

increasing filler content. Vibration damping in the low and high-frequency domains posed

new challenges initially through the use of time-temperature superposition supported by

Kramers-Kronig relations to validate the shift curves, which saw the shift factors relate to

the Williams-Landen-Ferry model. A high-frequency set-up was created to explore the epoxy

resin vibration responses up to 2KHz, in line with ASTM E756-05. The storage modulus

increased with increasing filler content at room temperature. Overall, this thesis explores

the relation of the zirconium tungstate filler to the epoxy resin focusing on the vibration

damping properties.