Abstract
Driven by the exceptionally high mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), over the years an extensive research effort has been devoted to the reinforcement of high-performance polymer fibres with CNTs. However, to date, improvements in the strength of these fibres have been rather modest even for relatively high CNT contents. After a brief review of CNT reinforced polymer fibres, here, analytical and numerical finite element models will be used to show that these experimental findings are to be expected based on the intrinsic mechanical properties of these polymer fibres and CNTs, their aspect ratio and interfacial characteristics. Results show that for realistic CNT contents and aspect ratios, the extraordinary strength of CNTs cannot be easily fully exploited in high-performance polymer fibres like Dyneema®or Kevlar®. Even if CNTs are perfectly aligned, bonded and dispersed, the low intrinsic shear strength of these highly anisotropic polymer fibres limits effective stress transfer and nanotube reinforcement.
Highlights
Carbon nanomaterials, in particular carbon nanotubes (CNTs), have been extensively studied as a reinforcement to produce high strength, low density and highly conductive composites, owing to their exceptional mechanical and ∗Preprint submitted to Nanocomposites electrical properties [1,2,3,4]
Equal to 7.5%, the CNT reinforced ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fibre would have a strength of ∼10 GPa, i.e. three times that of the unreinforced polyethylene fibre, and higher than the highest strength commercial carbon fibre
Analytical micromechanical models and finite element simulations were employed to explain why it is in practice so difficult to significantly reinforce high performance polymer fibres with CNTs
Summary
In particular carbon nanotubes (CNTs), have been extensively studied as a reinforcement to produce high strength, low density and highly conductive composites, owing to their exceptional mechanical and. The majority of these studies involved melt- or solution spun nanotube enhanced fibres with rather modest mechanical properties based on polymers such as polypropylene (PP) [41,42,43], poly(ethylene therephtale) (PET) [44, 45], polyamide (PA) [46,47,48], polyacrylonitrile (PAN) [49, 50], poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) [15, 51,52,53], poly(lactic acid) (PLA) [54], and poly(ether ether keton) (PEEK) [55] Many of these studies reported increased fibre properties, only few studies achieved effective nanotube reinforcement, while none of these nanotube enhanced fibres possessed mechanical properties that are competitive with commercial high performance fibres. Here, both analytical and finite element models will be employed to study the reinforcing potential of CNTs in high performance polymer fibres as a function of fibre properties, CNT content and interface conditions, while assuming that the CNTs are perfectly aligned and homogeneously dispersed within the polymer fibre
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