Electrospun nanofibers as reinforcement for composite laminates materials – A review

Abstract

In the last few decades nanofibers have been developed and introduced in a vast number of industrial and research applications. One of their most effective use is as interleaved reinforcement for composite laminate materials against delamination. Nanofibrous mats have the ideal morphology to be embedded between two plies of a laminate, and a vast and deep research has been carried out investigating their effect on the global behaviour of a composite laminate. This review is the first of its kind to date which presents a detailed state-ofthe-art on the effect of nanofibrous interleaves into composite laminates with focus on the mechanical performances and behaviours of nanomodified materials. A detailed description of the working mechanisms of the nanointerleave under different load cases is presented, and a comparative analysis between papers in literature will provide readers with a powerful tool to understand and use nanofibers for reinforcing purposes.

Damage Characterization of Nano-Interleaved CFRP under Static and Fatigue Loading

“…According to these methods, the nano-interleaved samples have shown a 120-140% increase of G IC , compared to the virgin samples. The results are coherent with similar researches as reported in [27,28]. The fracture toughness is improved at both crack initiation and propagation for the fatigue tests as illustrated in Figure 4.…”

Electrospun nanofiber interleaving in fiber reinforced composites—Recent trends

“…Table summarizes the polymers used to produce nanofibers for composite laminates reinforcing purposes, by considering the structure in which they were interleaved in—unidirectional, plain weave or tow, and the main matrix reinforcement—carbon and glass fibers. It is clear that most of the nanofibers fabricated using electrospinning utilized thermoplastic polymers owing to the ability of these nanofibers to adhere more uniformly to the thermosetting resin resulting in a better bond to increase fracture toughness . Moreover, although they have various desired properties, thermosetting epoxies tend to be brittle because of a high degree of crosslinking.…”

“…28 Reprinted with permission from Elsevier resulting in a better bond to increase fracture toughness. 15 Moreover, although they have various desired properties, thermosetting epoxies tend to be brittle because of a high degree of crosslinking. Therefore, it is commonly observed that hybrid or blends of nanofibers are being developed and deployed, which have multiple functionalities.…”

“…The above trends show that the topic is growing at an exponential rate and more and more research is being conducted. As the properties of these electrospun nanofiber reinforced composites can be affected by several TABLE 1 Tabulation of materials used to produce nanofibers for composite laminate reinforcing purposes, grouped by the structure they were interleaved in-unidirectional (UD), plain weave (PW) or tow (T), and the main reinforcement material-carbon or glass fiber 15 factors such as fiber diameter, aspect ratio, alignment, amount, interfacial interactions, etc, interleaving them to fabricate composites has proven superior in improving impact resistance, delamination resistance, fatigue properties, flexure strength, damping characteristics, and even in creating self-healing characteristics and so on. 11 Bicomponent fibers and nanofibers in a core/shell (C/S) configuration, including two dissimilar materials, have presented unusual potential for use in many novel applications.…”

Hybrid Woven Glass Fibre Fabric-Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube-Epoxy Composites Under Low Rate Impact

“…Spraying of MWNT solutions has been used as a means of achieving well dispersed MWNT coatings [27]. Palazzetti [28] investigated laminates of 0/90 woven carbon fibre/epoxy resin prepregs with interleaves of electrospun nylon 6,6 nanofibres placed either symmetrically (two interleaves by the front and two interleaves by the back face of the laminate) or asymmetrically comprising three interleaves by the back face of the laminate. He found that the thickness of interleaves in the range of 25-50 µm did not affect the laminate performance, these interleaves brought improvements by up to 24% for Mode II fracture toughness, no difference in the impact curves, reduction of absorbed impact energy for impact energy values of 3 and 6 J and about a 13% increase in the absorbed impact energy for the impact energy value of 12 J for the asymmetric interleaf architecture (against an 8% increase in the absorbed impact energy for the symmetric interleaf architecture).…”