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

Abstract

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.