Abstract
Carbon nanotube (CNT) enhanced composite materials have attracted the interest of many scientists worldwide, especially in the aerospace industry. Fundamental to their qualification as materials in primary aircraft structures is the investigation of the relationship between their functional characteristics and their long-term behaviour under external combined loads. Conductive reinforcement at the nanoscale is by definition multifunctional as it may (i) enhance structural performance and (ii) provide structural health monitoring functionalities. It is now well established that reversible changes in the electrical resistance in nano composites are related to strain and irreversible monotonic changes are related to cumulative damage in the nano composite. In this study, the effect of damage in the hysteretic electrical behaviour of nano-enhanced reinforced composites was investigated. The nanocomposites were subjected to different levels of damage and their response to a cyclic electrical potential excitation was monitored as a function of frequency. Along with the dynamic electrical investigation, an Electrical Potential Mapping (EPM) technique was developed to pin-point artificial damage in CNT-enhanced matrix composite materials. The electrical potential field of the bulk material has shown to be characteristic of its internal structural state. The results of EPM technique were contradicted and validated with conventional C-scans.
Highlights
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) possess a unique combination of mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties that makes them excellent candidates to substitute or complement the conventional nanofillers in the fabrication of multifunctional polymer nano-composites [1,2,3,4,5,6], mainly in the field of aerospace industry
Carbon nanotube (CNT) enhanced composite materials have attracted the interest of many scientists worldwide, especially in the aerospace industry
It is well established that reversible changes in the electrical resistance in nano composites are related to strain and irreversible monotonic changes are related to cumulative damage in the nano composite
Summary
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) possess a unique combination of mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties that makes them excellent candidates to substitute or complement the conventional nanofillers in the fabrication of multifunctional polymer nano-composites [1,2,3,4,5,6], mainly in the field of aerospace industry. The CNT dispersion process in epoxies has been related to the impedance of the system and has been successfully modeled as an equivalent RLC circuit [22, 23], little research effort has been devoted to the study of the impedance properties of nano-reinforcement composites and its relation to loading history and/or internal damage. Within the scope of this work is to enhance the resolving ability of the electrical based methodologies via the employment of AC configurations These involve the study of the effect of damage in the hysteretic electrical behavior of carbon nanotube reinforced epoxy nano composites. An Electrical Potential Mapping (EPM) technique was developed to pin-point artificial damage in CNT-enhanced matrix composite materials using DC resistance measurements, with a view to the development of an automated impedance mapping facility and its correlation to damage evolution in the structure
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