Effect of Nano TiO2 on Static Fracture Toughness of Fiberglass/Epoxy Composite Materials in Hot Climate regions

Abstract

This work is an experimental and numerical approach to analyze the effect of Nano powder additives and temperature on the critical crack length in fiber reinforced composite materials (FRC) exposed to uniaxial tensile load. Fiberglass/Epoxy compact tension test samples (CT) are prepared according to ASTM standard E399 . Tio2 Nano powder is added by 2% wt to the resin to other samples. The static tensile test is applied to the samples and the results for crack length/time are discussed. ABAQUS/CAE software is used to simulate the case. The numerical and experimental results were close. The experimental results showed that the addition of 2%wt Tio2 Nano powder increased the critical crack length by 32.4%. The effect of ambient temperature is studied too by applying the experimental test on the fiberglass/Epoxy samples in room temperature (30°C) once and at outdoor (60°C) temperature. The results showed that the effect of the temperature increase decreased the critical crack length by 51%. The numerical results determined the fracture toughness (KIC) for the fiberglass/Epoxy samples to be 491 pa.mm0.5 and 517 pa.mm0.5 for the fiberglass/Epoxy-Nano powder samples.