Fracture Toughness of Multi Walled Carbon Nano Tubes Modfied Polymer Composite in Mode - I

J V Sai Prasanna Kumar,G Raghava,A Joseph Stanley

doi:10.5539/jmsr.v1n3p117

Abstract

In the present work Multi Walled Carbon Nano Tubes were dispersed into Ly 566 with 1%, 3% and 5% by weight and nano composites were manufactured using the wet-layup technique in two different stacking sequences namely 0/90 and 0/0. For the dispersion of the nano tubes into the polymer an ultra sonic bath was utilized to sonicate the Multi Walled Carbon Nano Tubes. The property fracture toughness has been characterized by a using standard double cantilever beam (DCB) specimen to estimate the fracture parameter namely GIC. According to the tests the nano tube filling of the matrix of the composites has a beneficial effect on their interlaminar properties and the strain energy release rate increased significantly over the virgin samples. The broken fracture surfaces of the failed samples were examined with a high resolution scanning electron microscope.

Highlights

Delamination of the fiber reinforced composite laminate can significantly weaken the composite structure during impact loading (Gilbert et al, 2003; Mouritz et al, 1999)
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence on Mode-I delamination when Multi Walled Carbon Nano Tubes are added to continuous fiber reinforced polymer composites
The tests showed that 0 degree ply ahowed an improvement of 20 % over the samples without Multi walled carbon nano tubes (MWNT) infusion while the 5 % infusion of MWNT showed 54.10 % improvement for 0/0 layup

Summary

Introduction

Delamination of the fiber reinforced composite laminate can significantly weaken the composite structure during impact loading (Gilbert et al, 2003; Mouritz et al, 1999). Several approaches have used to increase the delamination resistance. A well known approach to inhibit the delamination is to manufacture the fiber perform using advanced textile technologies of knitting, braiding, stitching and weaving. The delamination resistance of the composite laminate can be affected by the alignment of fibers. Analysis using 3D finite element models showed a 10-40% increase in GIC (critical strain energy release rate of mode-I) for multi directional laminates with interfaces of 0/90, 0/45 and 45/-45 over the 0/0 laminates (Morais, 2003). These results were experimentally confirmed using double cantilever beam (DCB) tests

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Results

Conclusion