The blended ion exchange membrane between Nafion and ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) was used for fabrication of the ionic polymer–metal composite (IPMC) to redeem inherent drawbacks of Nafion such as high cost or environment-unfriendliness. EVOH solution was blended in Nafion solution by a volume ratio of 15 and 30 % membranes were prepared through solution casting method. The prepared blended Nafion membranes can be fabricated IPMCs with deposition of platinum electrode onto its surface without crack or delamination. The surface resistance of all prepared IPMCs is measured through 2 point probe. This study investigated the chemical structure and thermal properties of prepared membranes. Moreover, we characterized the cross-section morphology and studied the electromechanical performances (displacement and blocking force) of prepared IPMC actuators. The IPMC actuators with proposed blended Nafion membranes were demonstrated comparable electromechanical performance by significantly reducing the content of Nafion.
Toughness of a polymer is a key material property for energy absorbing capability for various engineering applications.
Significant effort has been made to improve toughness of a polymer and hence increase the energy absorbing capability;
typically rigid-particles in thermoplastics or rubbery modifiers in a brittle polymer matrix. The focus of this study is to
investigate toughening mechanisms of a thermoplastic polymer composite. Micron-size thermoplastic particle reinforced
polycarbonate (PC) composite materials was fabricated via a solution mixing method. The mechanical properties of the
polymer composites were characterized in tensile testing while the acoustic emission was monitored to assess the
material failure modes during the tensile test. Substantial improvement in tensile toughness was observed for the
polymer composites and the toughening mechanisms responsible for the improvement were identified and quantified for
each contribution to the observation.
Thermoplastic polymers are often reinforced by adding short fibers to improve mechanical properties including Young's
modulus and tensile strength of the polymers. In many engineering applications, energy absorbing characteristics in such
particulate polymers is known to be a very important property to be considered in composite designs, and meanwhile
debonding at the interface between fiber and matrix in the composites may affect the energy absorption properties. Here,
the focus of this study is to employ a semi-empirical approach to determine the debonding stress and investigate the
effect of the debonding stress on energy absorbing properties of short glass fiber reinforced polycarbonate composites.
Glass short fiber reinforced polycarbonate composites are fabricated via a solution mixing technique. Tensile testing and
acoustic emission measurement are simultaneously performed for the polycarbonate composites. The test results
including toughness are compared for the composites over neat polycarbonate. Also the local debonding stress in the
vicinity of each glass fiber in composites is estimated by combining modeling and experiments. A finite element model
is developed to determine local debonding stress at the interface between the fiber and matrix. The local debonding
stress appears to considerably affect the toughness of the composites.
Sandwich composite structures have highly desirable properties including superior stiffness and strength-to-weight
ratios. Such properties arise from combining thin, stiff materials called face sheets with a soft, thick core. Unfortunately
these properties give rise to poor acoustic performance, as sandwich structures efficiently radiate noise at low vibrational
frequencies. Therefore much consideration has been given to improve acoustic performance with small sacrifices in key
mechanical performances, such as bending stiffness and weight. This study focuses on sandwich composite structures
with both high noise mitigation and passive structural dampening. Specifically, it is sought to understand how the
vibrational responses of carbon-fiber face sheet sandwich composite beams are affected by the core's thickness, as well
as its properties. Here, it is shown that the relationship between bending stiffness and coincidence frequency (a metric of
acoustic performance) is non-linear. By reducing the core thickness from 10.7mm to 8.4mm, approximately 120%
improvement is seen in acoustic performance. Also, the core materials' specific shear modulus is inversely proportional
to acoustic performance. Finally, superior damping performance can lead to substantial noise mitigation in low
vibrational frequencies. Thus coupling these concepts will provide vastly improved acoustic performance with minimal
sacrifices in mechanical performance or weight.
This study involves the investigation of spherically shaped filler diameter and interphase effects on the Young's modulus
of micro and nano size silicon dioxide (SiO2) particle reinforced epoxy composite materials. Specifically, 10μm and
80nm size SiO2 particles and Epon 862 epoxy are chosen as fillers and a matrix material, respectively. While 10μm and
80nm SiO2 particles are dispersed in the epoxy through a direct shear mixing method, nano-composites are fabricated
with hardener at desirable ratios. Both micro- and nano-composites are prepared at 2 different particle loading fractions
for tensile testing. It is observed that the nano-composites show significant increase in Young's modulus over micro-composites,
showing a linear increase as particle volume fraction increases. This could indicate that for nano-composites,
the interphase region between the particle and matrix can considerably affect their mechanical properties. Here, we
develop a finite element analysis (FEA) model to investigate the interphase effect on the Young's modulus of both
micro- and nano-composites. This model demonstrates how to estimate the effective volume fraction of a particle as
filler using a combined experimental/numerical approach. The effective volume fraction is shown to be important in
predicting the mechanical response of nano-scale particles reinforced composite materials.
Recent studies show that continuously reinforced multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) composite can have
extraordinary mechanical properties. It was observed that the continuous MWCNT polymer composites exhibit both
significant reinforcement and large damping capability in compressive loadings, which typically remain compromised.
The damping property might result from buckling behavior of the MWCNT in composites. Here, this paper is to study
the buckling response of carbon nanotubes (CNT) within a polymer matrix by using analytical models including Euler,
Timoshenko and shell buckling models. Also, the modeling results are analyzed and compared to better understand the
bucking behavior of the CNT in the composite and also investigate the effect of their aspect ratio (L/D) on buckling
behavior. This study provides us with insight to better understand the structure-property relation for such continuous
CNT polymer composites.
Recent advances in the production and availability of nanoscale materials has led to a significant interest in the use of
nanoscale fillers in order to augment and tailor material performance in nanostructured composites. A specific area of
interest is the use of high aspect ratio fillers, such as carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon nanofibers (CNF) to augment
the damping capacity of nanostructured composites. Previous work has shown the use of high aspect ratio fillers to
significantly enhance the damping capacity at low frequency by more than 100%; however, the enhancement achieved
has been predicated on strain levels in the composite. Our previous studies have indicated a strong strain dependent
response in the nanostructured composites utilizing CNF to augment damping capacity. This is due, in part, to the
random distribution of fiber orientations seen in the nanostructured composites. The random distribution of filler
orientations is thereby relative to the load applied to the composite that results in a critical shear stress thresholds being
surpassed at the nano scale, allowing the filler to slip relative to the matrix, resulting in frictional energy dissipation as
heat and thereby inducing damping to the high aspect ratio filler nanostructured composite. In light of the promise this
technology holds for use in engineered applications requiring specific damping performance, there remains a
fundamental lack in understanding of the precise mechanisms and thereby a lack of ability to accurately predict material
performance, which is limiting application of the technology. This study looks at the effect of the random filler
orientation of CNF included composites and examines the viscoelastic response of the composite specifically
investigating the effect of filler orientation relative to the loading direction and the effect of filler waviness.
Furthermore, this study looks at the strain dependent nature of the viscoelastic response and develops an analytical
modeling tool to look at the effect of the strain dependent viscoelastic response seen in previous studies with the aim of
achieving a better fundamental understanding of the effect of filler orientation and the associated strain dependent nature
of the viscoelastic response seen in high aspect ratio nano- filled composites.
The focus of this study was to experimentally investigate spherically shaped micron-size particles reinforced polymethyl
methacrylate (PMMA) and polycarbonate (PC) polymer composites for improving energy absorbing capabilities such as
toughness and low-velocity impact resistance. In this study, a solution mixing method was developed to fabricate both
PMMA and PC polymer composites with spherically shaped micron-size polyamide- nylon 6 (PA6) particles inclusions.
The morphology of the fracture surfaces of polymer composites was examined by using optical microscopy and
scanning electron microscopy. Strain-rate dependent response of both PMMA and PC polymer composites was
investigated by characterizing tensile and flexural properties. Low-velocity penetration testing was performed for both
polymer composites and the key results observed for energy absorption capabilities are discussed in this study.
Base Epon 862 resin was enhanced with two types of fillers, graphitized carbon nanofiber (CNF) and silicon dioxide
(SiO2) particles. The effect of both filler type and filler loading were investigated with respect to the energy absorbing
capacity as well as the thermal stability of the hybrid composite material, measured in terms of the coefficient of thermal
expansion (CTE). As well the composites with combinations of the fillers were evaluated for both enhanced damping
and thermal stability, making it suitable for structural materials that need multiple functions. The composites were
evaluated with dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) to evaluate viscoelastic response, and using strain gauges to
measure thermal strain responses. It has been found that the addition of 3wt% SiO2 along with 3wt% CNF can improve
damping loss factors by up to 26% while at the same time improving thermal stability with reductions in CTE of up to
16.5%. Furthermore, these fillers loadings were successfully dispersed as received by mechanical mixing technique,
making fabrication more economically suited to engineering applications.
In this paper we investigate the mechanical response from repeated high compressive strains
on freestanding, long, vertically aligned multiwalled carbon nanotube membranes and show that the
arrays of nanotubes under compression behave very similar to soft tissue and exhibit viscoelastic
behavior. Under compressive cyclic loading, the mechanical response of nanotube blocks shows
initial preconditioning and hysteresis characteristic of viscoeleastic materials. Furthermore, no
fatigue failure is observed even at high strain amplitudes up to half million cycles. The outstanding
fatigue life and extraordinary soft tissue-like mechanical behavior suggest that properly engineered
carbon nanotube structures could mimic artificial muscles.
Several recent studies have shown that interfacial slip at the nanotube-matrix interfaces in carbon
nanotube polymer composites can give rise to significant dissipation of energy causing the material
structural damping to increase. This effect can be used to efficiently inject damping into composite and
heterogeneous structures. However if the interfacial slip of nanotube additives can be prevented, then
significant enhancement in stiffness and strength is possible. To inhibit interfacial slippage of nanotubes
we established covalent bonds at the nanotube-matrix interfaces by using an epoxidation procedure. The
resultant nano-composites are shown to be resistant to interfacial slip and exhibited a higher storage
modulus and a lower loss modulus compared to the baseline composite (without nanotube epoxidation).
These results indicate that functionalizing nanotubes to establish direct covalent linkages is an effective
way to engineer structural components with enhanced mechanical properties.
Multiwalled carbon nanotubes are dispersed in polycarbonate matrices using a novel solution mixing technique and dynamic load tests are performed to characterize the storage and loss modulus. Tests are also performed with pristine polycarbonate (no carbon fillers), to compare the response of the two materials. The test results indicate that as the strain amplitude is increased, the storage modulus decreases in conjunction with an increase in the loss modulus. This suggests that at large strain levels the adhesion between the nanotubes and polymer is not strong enough to prevent interfacial slip, resulting in frictional sliding at the tube-polymer interfaces. This debonding at the filler-matrix interface is responsible for the observed decrease in storage modulus and increase in loss modulus. The nanotube-polymer sliding energy dissipation mechanism shows potential to reliably and efficiently deliver high levels of structural damping to polymer structures.
This paper investigates the potential of exploiting interfacial sliding interactions in carbon nanotube
thin films for structural damping applications. Carbon nanotubes, due to their huge effective interfacial
area, may provide an unprecedented opportunity to dramatically improve damping properties with minimal
weight penalty. Three different mechanisms for interfacial friction damping in nanotube films were
identified in this paper. These include: 1) Energy dissipation due to inter-tube interactions, 2) Energy
dissipation due to nanotube-polymer interactions and 3) Energy dissipation due to nanotube and
encapsulated nanowire interactions. These damping mechanisms are investigated using computational
techniques (such as molecular dynamics) as well as experimentation (viscoelastic shear, bending tests). The
results indicate that over 15-fold increase in the material loss factor for an epoxy thin film can be achieved
by the use of carbon nanotube fillers.
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