SMC Glass Microspheres as a Low-Density Alternative to Traditional Fillers

The purpose of this paper is to investigate 2 issues involving the use of hollow-glass microspheres in sheet molded compound (SMC): 1) demonstrate the value of using volume fraction over weight fraction formulating to evaluate materials with significantly different densities and 2) directly compare physical property data of low density SMC to standard density commercially available SMC. The primary benefit of using hollow-glass microspheres in SMC, for the automotive industry, is reducing the weight of SMC parts.