You can purchase Advantic from our subsidiary, CRG Industries.
Advantic is CRG’s family of lightweight, engineered syntactic foams made with glass, polymer, or ceramic microspheres embedded in a resin matrix such as cyanate ester, silicone, or epoxy. CRG’s exclusive mixing process produces syntactic foams for a variety of applications and markets, from acoustic panels to aerospace structural cores. Advantic’s low density (half the density of water), high uniformity, strength (better than many grades of concrete), and minimum void content make the material beneficial to a wide and diverse market. CRG Industries can provide custom, high-performance Advantic for small and large projects.
What is Syntactic Foam?
Syntactic foam is a lightweight, engineered foam consisting of manufactured glass hollow spheres embedded in a resin matrix. These hollow spheres typically range from 10 to 200 microns in diameter and are available in several materials, including glass, ceramic, and polymers. This type of system has a very high compressive strength-to-weight ratio.
Advantic Applications
CRG’s syntactics (sold under the tradename Advantic) are a good fit for applications seeking weight reduction with little to no effect on performance or durability. Applications for syntactics include underwater buoyancy applications, structural core for aerospace components, tooling pattern-making applications, small arms grips, rifle stocks, acoustics, oil well operations, and deep sea operations.
Syntactic is also easily machinable, making it a viable choice for many applications. With a coefficient of thermal expansion similar to aluminum, syntactic optical components can significantly reduce the weight of an optical system. Since Advantic is lighter than water, has high compressive strength, and remains buoyant, it can provide structural buoyancy for dive equipment, oil drilling and rigging tools, flotation buoys, and underwater pipelines.
What Makes CRG's Syntactic Foam Unique?
CRG has developed a unique process to produce a strong yet lightweight syntactic composite. This process involves a low-stress resin removal system in which the excess resin is extracted from the syntactic material before the resin is cured. Along with the excess resin, any microspheres that may have been broken during the mixing process are also removed. The result has low density and void-free content, essential for high integrity composites. Advantic has outperformed benchmark materials and is being sold through CRG Industries.
Advantic can be custom fabricated in many different shapes including blocks, cylinders, and even thin sheets. The density of Advantic ranges anywhere from 0.30g/cc to 0.55g/cc, providing a range of syntactic suitable for specific applications. As a reference for how light Advantic is, balsa wood has a density ranging from 0.1 to 0.2g/cc, while aluminum has a density of 2.7g/cc. Advantic has a density close to that of balsa, but has significantly higher strength. Depending on the resin system used, foamed syntactic composite also has the potential for an improved transition temperature and a low dielectric constant, making it ideal for space use.
Who Uses Advantic?
In 2005, Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society used Advantic for fine-tuning the buoyancy of their new rebreather diving systems. CRG provided the material on short notice to support the Cousteau diving team’s test schedule in preparation for filming deep dives on the wreck of the Civil War-era, ironclad warship, Monitor. Advantic met the team’s needs for a strong, machinable, and lightweight material for adjusting the rebreathers’ center of gravity.
Additionally, oceanographic companies are using Advantic for deep water buoyancy applications.