Abstract
Metallic substrates and polymer adhesive in composite-metal joints have a relatively large coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch, which is a barrier in the growing market of electric vehicles and their battery structures. It is reported that adding carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to the adhesive reduces the CTE of the CNT-enhanced polymer adhesive multi-material system, and therefore when used in adhesively bonded joints it would, theoretically, result in low CTE mismatch in the joint system. The current article presents the influence of two specific mass ratios of CNTs on the CTE of the enhanced polymer. It was observed that the addition of 1.0 wt% and 2.68 wt% of multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs) decreased the CTE of the polymer adhesive from °C (pristine level) to °C and °C, respectively, by 22% and 41% reductions.
Highlights
Due to their advantages of energy saving and environmental protection, high-performance electric vehicles are under rapid development [1]
The aim of the present study was to reduce the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE)
A low viscosity bisphenol-A epoxy resin was modified with the addition of 1 wt% and 2.68 wt% multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs) and was used in adhesive–metal bonded joints
Summary
Due to their advantages of energy saving and environmental protection, high-performance electric vehicles are under rapid development [1]. The structure adhesive bonding technology, as a new type of lightweight structural joining technology nowadays, exhibits good performance when joining dissimilar materials, such as those identified in, and solves the technical bottlenecks in conventional joining processes [2,3,4,5,6,7] It has good sealing and fatigue resistance compared to traditional joining methods, which make them suitable for the assembling process of high-performance electric vehicles [8]. CTE mismatch is the main source of inducing internal shear stress that may result in joint failure at high temperatures. It has been reported in previous studies that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can be utilised as additives in epoxy-based adhesives to engineer their CTEs, allowing for the manufacture of enhanced adhesives with tailorable CTEs to meet the requirements of a wide range applications [11,12,13,14]
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