The Effect of Thermal Cycling on the Tensile and Shear Behaviors of the Carbon Nanotube-Reinforced Epoxy

Ali Anvari,Sanjeev Khanna,Antonio Concilio

doi:10.1155/2021/1741544

Abstract

The aim of this research is to study the tensile and shear properties and mechanical behavior of carbon nanotube- (CNT-) reinforced epoxy after the resulting composites have been exposed to different thermal cycling environments. Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are cylindrical molecules that consist of rolled-up sheet of single-layer carbon atoms (graphene) with a diameter of less than 1 nanometer (nm). Thermal cycling environments can exist in many conditions, such as in-earth orbit for satellites which rotate around the earth and pass through the sun illumination and earth’s shadow, and for airplanes which fly in different altitudes with different temperatures. Carbon nanotube-reinforced epoxy is one of the nanocomposite materials which have been broadly used in many applications such as aerospace, automotive, electronics, and other industries. The goal of this study is to fabricate this nanocomposite with different multiwall and single-wall CNT concentrations and expose it to different thermal cycle numbers and determine the changes in tensile and shear properties and failure characteristics. For this purpose, tension and short-beam tests have been used in this research. The addition of multiwall CNT produces better mechanical properties compared to the use of SWCNT reinforcement. However, unreinforced epoxy showed the highest mechanical properties.

Highlights

Lijima has been the first scientist that introduced the carbon nanotubes (CNT) [1]
The mechanical properties of the multiwalled CNTs (MWCNTs)-reinforced epoxy at room temperature and due to thermal cycling are always lower than the unreinforced epoxy
For each concentration of MWCNT, the tensile properties improve at 1500 thermal cycles but degrade as the number of thermal cycles increases to 3000

Summary

Introduction

Lijima has been the first scientist that introduced the CNTs [1]. CNTs are cylindrical molecules that consist of rolled-up sheets of single-layer carbon atoms (graphene). CNTs have been applied in different industries such as electronics, aerospace, and automotive. The reasons that CNTs have attracted many industries are the excellent mechanical properties such as high aspect ratio, high Young’s modulus, and high tensile strength [2]. Due to the mentioned CNT properties, recently, many experiments and studies have been conducted to analyze the structure, mechanics, and synthesis of the CNTs [3,4,5,6,7]. Currently in the area of new material’s characterization, an article has been published [8]

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