Micromechanics-Based Thermo-Mechanical Simulation of SCS-6 Fiber-Reinforced Ti-6Al-7Nb Matrix Nanocomposite

Abstract

This paper uses a sequential micromechanical method to characterize the thermomechanical properties of a hybrid nanocomposite. It does this by using analytical models (such as the modified rule of mixtures, Tsai-Pagano model, and Schapery model) and numerical models (such as the Finite element model), which are modeled using the commercial software ABAQUS. Investigations are made to determine how the aspect ratio, waviness, and volume fractions of the reinforcement affect the thermo-mechanical performance of the hybrid nanocomposite. It has been shown that adding CNT ESFs to conventional SiC-reinforced titanium alloy composites (TMCs) improves the resulting HTMNC thermo-mechanical properties. It is found that the addition of CNT ESFs to TMCs improves the thermo-mechanical characteristics of the resulting hybrid nanocomposite (i.e., HTMNCs) more in the transverse direction than in the axial direction for all volume fractions of SiC fiber. For instance, it is observed that adding a 2.69% volume fraction of CNT ESFs to the TMCs with a 30% volume fraction of SiC fiber enhances the axial elastic modulus by 2.6% and 2.4% while increasing the transverse elastic modulus by 4.2% and 3.5%, based on the CNT ESFs are straight and wavy. On the other hand, for the same volume fraction of SiC fiber and the addition of 2.69% volume fraction of Straight CNT ESFs, the transverse and axial CTE of the HTMNCs are reduced by 5.33% and 2.53%, respectively. Moreover, when the SiC fiber aspect ratio increases, the axial elastic modulus increases while the transverse elastic modulus exhibits no change. In contrast to the elastic modulus, the CTE increases in the transverse direction while decreasing in the axial direction.