Hardness, wear behavior and processing time of diluent and non-diluent nanocomposite laminates manufactured by vacuum infusion technique

Abstract

The manufacturing of nanocomposites using the Vacuum Resin Infusion (VRI) technique can be considered a challenging task. The reason for this challenge is the high viscosity of the nanofilled resin. For large composite laminates, the nanofilled resin may be cured before complete mold filling, and thus can be considered as a waste of money. In this study, different weight fractions of TiO2 nanoparticles (0.25 wt. % and 0.5 wt. %) were added to epoxy resin. Also, different weight fractions of ethanol (0.5 wt. % and 1 wt. %) were added to both unfilled and nanofilled epoxy. The processing time, hardness, and wear behavior of the composite laminates were investigated. It was found that the addition of TiO2 nanoparticles improved the hardness and wear behavior of composite laminates but the processing time was high. Also, results showed that adding a small amount of ethanol (0.5 wt. %) and 0.25 wt. % of TiO2 nanoparticles to epoxy reinforced with chopped/woven glass fiber not only reduced the processing time but also improved the hardness and wear resistance as compared to neat composite laminates. Moreover, adding 0.5 wt. % of ethanol and 0.25 wt. % of TiO2 nanoparticles to woven E-glass/epoxy (WN0.25E0.5) gives hardness and wear resistance close to that obtained with woven E-glass/epoxy filled with 0.5 wt. % of TiO2 nanoparticles (WN0.5). It is economical to manufacture WN0.25E0.5 rather than WN0.5 as the cost and processing time of WN0.25E0.5 is lower than WN0.5.

Tribological and Mechanical Properties of Epoxy Reinforced by Hybrid Nanoparticles

“…Because of these characteristics, these resins have been used widely as matrices in numerous applications (Zhang et al,2018b). The addition of nanoparticles such as nano-ceramic, nano-wires, carbon nanotubes, and graphene structures to epoxy resins leads to an increase in desired mechanical properties (Kurahatti et al, 2014;Megahed et al, 2018Megahed et al, , 2019Megahed et al, , 2021Agwa et al, 2020;Youssef et al, 2020). Because of crack pinning and plastic void growth, which arise from reinforcing the epoxy with nano-ceramics, the addition of nanoparticles contributes to increasing composite toughness (Jiang et al,2014).…”

Tribological and mechanical properties of nanofilled glass fiber reinforced composites and analyzing the tribological behavior using artificial neural networks

“…7 In recent years, many studies [8][9][10][11][12][13] have aimed to improve the mechanical properties as well as impact resistance, wear resistance, electrical, and thermal properties of fiber-reinforced polymers by incorporating different types of fillers. 14 Wear is typically defined as damage involving material loss due to relative motion between two contacting surfaces. In nano-filled fiber-reinforced composites, the filler used to enhance the tribological performance of the material contributes to increasing the composite's hardness and strength and reducing its contact with the opposing surface by uniformly dispersing within the matrix and establishing a strong bond with the matrix.…”

“…To mitigate these issues, micro‐ or nano‐scale filler materials are added to fiber‐reinforced composites 7 . In recent years, many studies 8–13 have aimed to improve the mechanical properties as well as impact resistance, wear resistance, electrical, and thermal properties of fiber‐reinforced polymers by incorporating different types of fillers 14 …”