Characterizing the Self-Sensing Performance of Carbon Nanotube- Enhanced Fiber-Reinforced Polymers

摘要

The increased usage of fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP) in recent decades has created a need to monitor the unique response of these materials to impact and fatigue damage. As most traditional nondestructive evaluation methods are ill-suited to detecting damage in FRPs, new methods must be created without compromising the high strength-to-weight aspects of FRPs. This paper describes the characterization of carbon nanotube-polyelectrolyte thin films applied to glass fiber substrates as a means for in situ strain sensing in glass fiber-reinforced polymers (GFRP). The layer-by-layer deposition process employed is capable of depositing individual and small bundles of carbon nanotubes within a polyelectrolyte matrix and directly onto glass fiber matrices. Upon film fabrication, the nanocomposite-coated GFRP specimens are mounted in a load frame for characterizing their electromechanical performance. This preliminary results obtained from this study has shown that these thin films exhibit bilinear piezoresistivity. Time- and frequency-domain techniques are utilized to characterize the nanocomposite strain sensing response. An equivalent circuit is also derived from electrical impedance spectroscopic analysis of thin film specimens.