Hanan Naji Al-Ali
Dhahran Ahliyya School, Dammam, Eastern, SAUDI ARABIA
Composite materials have beneficial applications, especially in aerospace and automotive technologies, due to their desirable properties, which include overall low weight and high strength. Adding nanoreinforcements to composite materials could potentially improve the thermal and electrical properties contained therein. However, few studies focused on the effect of the carbon nanotubes (CNT) on the mechanical properties on multi-scale laminates. It is important to study the transverse damage behavior in a multi-scale laminate because every aspect and property need to be assessed. Therefore, this scienctific research project focused on fabrication of two Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) +45 -45 laminates using the vacuum infusion method; one with nanoreinforcements and one without nanoreinforcements. The effect of reinforcing the matrix of the GFRP with 0.1 wt% of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT), using ultrasonic mixing on the material`s mechanical properties was investigated. Five samples were prepared and a simple tensile test was applied using the universal testing machine to identify the shear strength. The shear strength is directly related to the bulk matrix and the matrix-fiber interface of the material, which are the phases aimed by the process to reinforce with CNT. Experimentations showed that the nanoreinforced samples exhibit around 5-10% more damage than the non-nanoreinforeced samples. This shows that nanoreinforcements do not improve the mechanical properties of a composite material, as was hypothesized. In future works, we hope to study the effect of changing the amount of carbon nanotubes that are added and the exact methods of adding them.