R&D on glass fiber reinforced epoxy resin composites for superconducting Tokamak.

The glass fiber reinforced epoxy resin composites play an important role in superconducting Tokamak, which are used to insulate the metal components, such as superconducting winding, cooling pipes, metal electrodes and so on. For the components made of metal and glass fiber reinforced epoxy resin composites, thermal shrinkage leads to non-ignorable thermal stress, therefore, much attention should be paid on the thermal shrinkage rate of glass fiber reinforced epoxy resin composites. The structural design of glass fiber reinforced epoxy resin composites should aim at reducing thermal stress. In this paper, the density, glass fiber content and thermal shrinkage rate of five insulation tubes were tested. The testing results will be applied in structural design and mechanical analysis of isolators for superconducting Tokamak.