Fabrication and Characterization of Nano-filled Polymer Composites

Abstract

Polymers are essential matrix materials for fabricating advanced composites. The reinforcing materials take many forms. In addition to continuous fibers, filler reinforced was used. In this work, the influence of incorporation nano-metal particles to glass fiber/epoxy composites was investigated. Aluminum was used as metal nanoparticles. Nano and Micro fillers was sonicated with epoxy resin by ultrasonic processor to ensure good distribution of fillers. The composite laminate was fabricated by hand lay-up technique. Woven glass fiber was used as fiber reinforcement. The volume fraction of glass fiber was 35%. The aluminium fillers were added with weight percentage of 0.2 wt%, 2-wt% and 4-wt%. The results show that the fabricated composites have shown an improvement in tensile, flexural, and hardness strengths as compared to neat glass fiber/epoxy composites. The failure strain increased in both the tensile and flexural tests. Increasing the weight content of nano aluminium particles to 4-wt % decrease the tensile strengths. However, increasing the aluminium micro-particles to 4 wt% has shown enhancement in mechanical properties. Micro aluminum fillers indicated a maximum of 195 MPa at 4wt% Al. A higher weight fraction of nano Al in the epoxy resin had showed little agglomerations. The water absorption values observed were lower for composite filled with nanoparticle. The flexural strength increased by 52.21%, flexural strain by 21.4 %, and flexural modulus by 76.57% compared to GFRE.