Investigation on degradation studies and deformation behavior of water diffused Al-epoxy nanocomposites

Abstract

Polymer nanocomposites are used in the space environment, aerospace structural applications, and power applications due to their good mechanical and dielectric properties. Polymeric materials used in these conditions may absorb moisture, driven by the diffusion due to rain or fog condensation, HVDC cable and aerospace structural parts constituting epoxy based composites would lead to ageing and degradation over a period of time due to environmental and static loading conditions in the actual service conditions. Since the degradation initiate at the surface of the material influencing both dielectric and mechanical properties, surface characteristics of water diffused insulating materials & tensile properties ought to be investigated. The studies through surface characterization methods viz. contact angle, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and water droplet initiated corona inception voltage (CIV) of water diffused Al-epoxy nanocomposites are made and the comparative analysis is performed with their unaged nanocomposites. Tensile properties of the Al-epoxy nanocomposites were investigated for its deformation behavior under static load. The experimental results revealed that the controlled addition of nanofiller has shown the lower diffusion coefficients for the aged nanocomposites. The contact angle measurements have exhibited an inverse relation with the surface roughness measured through AFM. Though CIV characteristics are drastically reduced for water diffused nanocomposites, slight enhancement in these properties is observed with the nanofiller inclusion. The tensile behavior of Al reinforced epoxy nanocomposites is compared with aged composites. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of Implast 2016.