Mechanical material characterization of an embedded Carbon nanotube in polymer matrix by employing an equivalent fiber

Effective elastic properties for carbon nanotube reinforced composites are obtained through a variety of micromechanics techniques. An embedded carbon nanotube  in  a  polymer  matrix  and  its surrounding  interphase  is  replaced with an equivalent fiber for  predicting  the  mechanical  properties of  the  carbon  nanotube/polymer composite. The effects of an interphase layer between the nanotubes and the polymer matrix as result of effective interphase layer is investigated. A modeling analysis investigating the effect of the aspect ratio on the tubes reinforcement mechanism has been carried out. The variations of mechanical properties with tube reduce, interphase thickness and waviness is investigated. Furthermore in this work, the classical theory concerning the mechanical efficiency of a matrix embedding finite length fibers has been modified by introducing the tube-to-tube Random Contact which explicitly accounts for the progressive reduction of the tubes effective aspect ratio as the filler content increases.

Keywords:

Equivalent fiber , Effective interphase model , Waviness , Aspect Ratio , mechanical properties