A Nanomechanical Approach on the Measurement of the Elastic Properties of Epoxy Reinforced Carbon Nanotube Nanocomposites

摘要

The mechanical behavior of nanocomposite materials with multiwallcarbon nanotube ( MWCNT ) reinforcements is investigated in the present paper. Epoxy nanocomposites with different weight percentages of carbon nanotubes have been characterized following tensile tests and nanoindentations. The objective of this work was to investigate the efficiency of the reinforcement provided by nanotubes and to examine the agreement between the mechanical properties of the epoxynanocomposites obtained via a macroscale and nanoscale experimentalmethods. Higher increase in modulus was accomplished at weight fraction of nanotube reinforcement of 1 %. The modulus as measured by the tensile tests differed an average of 18% with the results obtained from the nanoindentations, however by utilizing a proper calibration method the resulting data were corrected to only a 3% difference. The modulus results obtained from the experiments were compared with the Halpin - Tsai model and with the Thostenson - Chou model accounting for the outer layer interactions of the nanotube with the hosting matrix. A relatively good agreement was found between the models and the experiments.