In-Plane Shear Properties of Nano-Hybridized GFRE Composites with MWCNTs

Epoxy resin modified with nanofillers cannot be used alone for high performance structural applications due to their low-mechanical properties. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to hybridize composite laminates with different fiber configurations by 1.0 wt% multi–walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). The hybridized composite laminates include, quasi-isotropic [0/±45/90]s glass fiber reinforced nanophased-epoxy (QI-GFR/MWCNT/E) and unidirectional [0]8 UD-GFR/MWCNT/E. In parallel, control laminates are fabricated without MWCNTs. Results from Iosipescu shear characterization showed that the in-plane shear (IPS) strength and modulus of MWCNTs-nanocomposite are improved by 40.9% and 21.9% respectively compared to neat epoxy. The IPS strengths of QI-GFR/MWCNT/E and UD-GFR/MWCNT/E laminates are improved by 39.5% and 1.4% respectively. The IPS moduli of the hybridized composite laminates showed about 17% improvement compared to the control laminates. The improvement in the IPS properties of the hybridized composite laminates was due to the good interface bond strength between the constituent materials. The predicted IPS modulus of MWCNT/E using Halpin-Tsai model agrees very well with the experimental results with only 4.2% variation.