Influence of Particle Size and Volume Fraction on Tensile Behavior of Polymer-Clay Nanocomposite Using FEA

The purpose of the present work is to investigate the influence of volume fraction and aspect ratio of clay platelet on the tensile behavior of exfoliated nylon 66 /clay nanocomposite with the aid of numerical simulation. The effect of aspect ratio (defined as the ratio of the particle length to the particle thickness) of clay platelet and volume fraction of clay on the behavior of nanocomposite is investigated. From the results it is observed that tensile strength and tensile modulus increase with increasing the volume fraction and aspect ratio.Polymer/clay nanocomposites are polymeric materials that are reinforced by nanoclay particles whose dimensions are in the sub-micron scale and the particles are composed of stacks of 1 nm thick mono-layers whose in-plane dimensions range from 100 nm to 1000 nm.Many researchers have tried to present finite element model for simulating clay nanocomposites. Each was presented to investigate a specific parameter. The effect of exfoliation factor, clay module and volume fraction on the modulus of nanocomposite which is composed of a linear polymer by a multi scale modeling method is studied [1]. A three dimensional model for evaluation of the elastic modulus of polymer-clay nanocomposite is also presented [2].In this work a periodic two dimensional finite element model is developed to simulate the clay nanocomposite behavior and evaluate the stress-strain curve. The Nylon 66 used in this study has nonlinear elastic behavior. By varying the aspect ratio, the behavior of nanocomposite with 4% volume fraction clay is studied. Finally, the stress-strain curve for nanocomposite with different volume fraction clay is obtained.