Chris corbine wrote: Why So Much White Paint? Excerpt from the attached hyperlink; http://www.exp-aircraft.com/library/alexande/composit.html
To understand post curing, it is necessary to define the term glass transition temperature or Tg. The glass transition temperature is the point where the physical properties of a resin material start to decrease as temperatures are elevated. The temperature at which the resin "transitions" (T) from a hard, glassy state (g) to a soft rubbery state is called its Tg. At the Tg the tensile strength, chemical resistance, and hardness are significantly reduced while the flexibility is increased. As you might imagine, we do not want our completed airplane to reach the Tg temperature. To prevent this from occurring, one method is to post cure the resin. Another way is to paint our airplane a light color (usually white) to preclude the temperature on the inside of the airplane from being excessive. On a 90 degree F day, it is not unusual for the temperature inside your airplane structure to reach 180 degrees F plus. This is why you see most composite airplanes painted white. The white color helps reflect the heat keeping the temperature inside the airplane component parts as low as possible. I have heard that you can paint a fiberglass airplane any color that you want, just as long as its white. I hope the link helps Edward Spyker jesj69 (at) Yahoo dot COM
