Influence of Graphene Nano Fillers and Carbon Nano Tubes on the Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Hollow Glass Microsphere Epoxy Composites

Kumar D,Vineet Tirth,Manzoore Elahi M Soudagar,Muruganandhan R,Kiran Shahapurkar,Chandru Manivannan,C Venkatesh,Ahmed S El-Shafay,Ibrahim M Alarifi

doi:10.3390/pr10010040

Abstract

The present work aimed to analyze the roll of carbon nano tubes and graphene nano fillers on the mechanical and thermal characteristics of hollow glass microsphere reinforced epoxy composites. Composites with varying content of hollow glass microballoons (2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 wt %) reinforced in epoxy matrix were fabricated. Additionally, two more types of composites, one with graphene nano fillers and the other with carbon nano tube at a constant 0.5 wt %, were fabricated with varying weight percentages of hollow glass microballoons (2, 4, 6, 8, and 10%). The composites were fabricated using an open mold casting process. Composites were tested for thermal and mechanical properties. The tensile and flexural moduli were found to rise as the HGM concentration increased. Graphene-filled HGM/epoxy composites revealed the highest modulus compared with HGM/epoxy and HGM/CNT/epoxy composites. The impact strength of all composite types decreased as the HGM content increased. Neat epoxy specimens revealed low response as compared with all the composites tested. Further, the thermal conductivity of HGM/epoxy composites was lower as compared with other compositions and neat epoxy. Scanning electron microscopy was used to analyze the surface morphological behavior of the composites subjected to flexural test. It was found that HGM/G/E composites with 10% of HGM and 0.5% of graphene by weight in epoxy matrix were the optimum.

Highlights

Closed cell hollow particles are reinforced in matrix to realize syntactic foams [1,2,3].These foams offer advantages of lower moisture inclusion, high compression response, and higher damage tolerances [4,5]
Uniform dispersion of constituents in the epoxy matrix, and lower void content significantly influenced the mechanical behavior of composites
It was evident that the densities of all the composites declined with increasing hollow glass microballoon content

Summary

Introduction

Closed cell hollow particles are reinforced in matrix to realize syntactic foams [1,2,3]. These foams offer advantages of lower moisture inclusion, high compression response, and higher damage tolerances [4,5]. High flexibility in design can be attained by selecting suitable hollow spheres and matrices These hollow particles are widely employed with polymer matrix composites because they are lightweight, have a high strength-to-weight ratio, and are stiff [6]. Ferreira et al examined the influence of HGM filler with carbon short fiber and glass-reinforced epoxy composites and found that with the increase of HGM content, there was an increase in flexural, compressive, and impact properties.

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