Mode I interlaminar fracture toughness improvement of the glass/epoxy composite by using multiscale composite approach

Abstract

Double cantilever beam set-up is a very conservative approach to characterize mode I interlaminar fracture toughness, which is nothing but resistance of the plies against delamination. The composites have remarkable mechanical properties in the in-plane, but they are fragile in the out-of-plane direction, which causes the stacking plies to delaminate upon several loading scenarios. Also, the commonly used matrix, i.e., the epoxy resin, which intervenes the reinforcing plies, is brittle. These fracture of composites restrict their use in many engineering applications. By using multiscale composite approach, i.e., incorporating different nano-fillers as MWCNT, MLG, and their hybrid combination in the matrix phase, it gets toughened and the interlaminar fracture toughness of the composites under tensile loading is improved by 25.66%, 15.25%, and 19.157% of their base composites. Also, fractography of the delaminated samples was performed using environmental scanning electron microscopy to highlight different toughening mechanisms.