Fabrication of Epoxy/Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube-Nanoclay Nanocomposites: Investigation of Fracture Toughness

The effect of concurrent presence of multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWNT) and nanoclay on fracture toughness of epoxy was studied. First, the effects of various contents of MWNT and nanoclay (as reinforcement factors) on fracture toughness of epoxy were investigated separately. Then, the optimum content of each reinforcement factor was used concurrently in epoxy and the changes in the amount of fracture toughness of the resulting nanocomposite compared with those of previous nanocomposites were studied. The SEM studies were used for the fractography of specimens and also for investigating the dispersion of MWNTs in the matrix which indicated that the MWNTs were dispersed well. The Xray diffraction (XRD) was applied to determine the d-spacing of nanoclay layers. The results show that d-spacing of layers increases from 18.42 A° to 42.28 A° and an intercalated nanocomposite is obtained

کلیدواژه ها:

MWNT ، Nanoclay ، Epoxy ، Fracture toughness ، Fractography