Mechanical properties of porous polymeric nanocomposites reinforced with mesoporous silica nanoparticles and hydroxyapatite: experimental studies and simulations

Abstract

Numerical simulations based on finite element analysis (FEA) are increasingly considered essential, important and practical in the course of designing new products these days. Two of the main encountered challenges in using numerical simulation are their ability and precision to predict the mechanical behavior of advanced materials such as polymers or composites. This study demonstrates how mechanical properties and behaviors of porous polymeric nanocomposites can be determined and predicted using tensile loading test data in numerical simulations. The outcome of these simulations could considerably reduce manufacturing cost of these materials in practice. In this study, Polypropylene (PP) has been reinforced with three different types of nanoparticles, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN), hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (HAP), and a mixture of these two. The mechanical tests that were used in this study were tensile test, three-point bending test, and Izod impact test. The final outcome of the tests and their numeric values were numerically simulated using Abaqus FEA software. Knowing that the mechanical behaviors of these materials are determined by hyperelasticity theory, we used hyperelastic material model to simulate the results. The reason was that this model has different strain-energy density functions. To simulate the tests numerically, the tensile loading test data were used to simulate uniaxial tensile test. The outcome enabled us to draw the related stress–strain curves that were percentage errors of module of elasticity, yield strength, and ultimate strength curves. This was step one of our study. A comparison between these three curves demonstrated that Marlow model could be the best model to predict the actual mechanical behaviors of hyperelastic materials. In the next step, the data generated by tensile loading test were used to carry out numerically simulated bending and Izod impact tests. The outcome demonstrated a close resemblance between simulation results and the tensile loading test results. These results show that numerical simulation can be used to predict mechanical properties of these kinds of materials instead of undertaking costly and time consuming three-point bending and Izod impact tests.