Energy dissipated by spherical nanoparticles debonding in nanocomposites under cryogenic and steady state conditions

Abstract

In this paper, an analytical model was presented to estimate the influence of nanoparticles size and volume fraction on the debonding dissipation energy of nanoparticles/polymer nanocomposites in cryogenic temperature. A spherical representative volume element including a nanoparticle and a pure polymer phase was considered. It was assumed that the temperature is uniform within the whole RVE, i.e., a steady state temperature condition. Using the stress and displacement fields within the constituents of RVE, the dependence of the debonding dissipation energy on the nanoparticles size and volume fraction was obtained at a certain temperature. In addition to the analytical model, a finite element (FE) analysis using surface-based cohesive method was carried out to simulate the debonding process under cryogenic and steady state conditions. It was observed that the nanoparticles size has a significant effect on the energy dissipated by debonding. Moreover, the results manifested that the nanoparticles volume fraction affects the dissipation energy of debonding in nanocomposites reinforced by larger nanoparticles at cryogenic temperature. A good agreement was also found between the FE analysis results and the closed-form solution data. The conclusions obtained by this closed-form solution can be useful as a trigger for the other energy dissipation mechanisms occurred in the nanocomposites reinforced by nanofillers such as silica, alumina, titania, etc.