DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFUNCTIONAL ADVANCED COMPOSITES WITH POLYMER NANOCOMPOSITE MATRICES FOR AEROSPACE APPLICATIONS

摘要

A successful employment of carbon nanofibers as a filler in the unsaturated polyester resin was reported. The obtained nanocomposite was subsequently exploited as a matrix of a glass fiber reinforced composite. The realization of a carbon nanofiber based nanocomposite matrix, has allowed to obtain a polyester-based GFRP with a significantly lower electrical resistivity. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility to enable the production of a glass fiber based composite with improved electrical conductivity, in which the measurable electrical resistance is exploited as a way to sense damages in the composite itself. Following this goal, the value of the resistance of the samples produced, was constantly measured and monitored during their mechanical testing. Two different mechanical solicitations were applied: flexural and impact. The results have shown that it is possible to observe a variation of the electrical resistance of the composite in correspondence of both the growth of a flexural state of stress, and the creation of an impact damage.