Mechanical Properties of Graphene/Epoxy Nanocomposites under Static and Flexural Fatigue Loadings

Abstract

In the present study, the effect of various weight fractions of graphene nanoplatelet (GPL) on flexural fatigue behavior of epoxy polymer has been investigated at room temperature and generally the temperature was monitored on the surface of specimen during each test. The flexural stiffness of grapheme nano-platelet/epoxy nanocomposites at 0.1, 0.25 and 0.5 wt. % as a main effective parameter on flexural bending fatigue was considered. The samples were implemented to different displacement fatigue amplitudes and it led to the known bending strength ratio. Finally, the flexural fatigue responses of graphene nano-platelet/epoxy nanocomposites at mentioned graphene contents were taken into account. The experimental results show that the addition of 0.25 wt. % of graphene nano-platelet on fatigue life was more effective in comparison with 0.1 and 0.5 wt. % epoxy graphene nanocomposites. According to the addition of graphene nano-platelets, a remarkable increase in fatigue life of epoxy was observed. For instance, at the bending strength ratio equal to 43% by adding 0.1, 0.25 and 0.5 wt. % of graphene into epoxy resin, 22.4, 27.4 and 17 times improvement in flexural bending fatigue life of the neat epoxy were observed, respectively.