Effective Evaluation of Elastic Properties of a Graphene and Ceramics Reinforced Epoxy Composite under a Thermal Environment Using the Impact Hammer Vibration Technique

Abstract

This paper presents an evaluation of the mechanical properties of nanocomposites when a lower concentration of nanoparticles graphene and ceramics are mixed with epoxy to determine the damping and stability characteristics of hybrid epoxy, using vibration techniques to extract accurate results. The effectiveness of the Impact hammer vibration technique is validated with mechanical testing such as three-point bending in terms of Young’s modulus of the nanocomposite. The graphene nanocomposite carries nanoparticle 1 wt.% of epoxy, while the ceramic nanocomposite carries 3 wt.% of epoxy. It is observed that the reduction in frequency under a thermal environment is significantly less for graphene and ceramic reinforced hybrid nanocomposites, whereas the reduction in pure epoxy under a thermal environment is high. Thus, the results show that the addition of nanoparticles to composites shows improvement in the mechanical and thermal stability of elastic properties. The elastic properties obtained from the vibrational analysis are more consistent and economical than the three-point bending test for the evaluation of hybrid nanocomposites.