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Dynamic Mechanical and Impact Property Correlation of Nanoclay and Graphite Platelet Reinforced Vinyl Ester Nanocomposites
1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Mississippi, Mississippi, MS, USA
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: meprm{at}olemiss.edu.
An experimental investigation was carried out to correlate the impact response of nanocomposites with the dynamic, inherent damping, and glass transition properties of Derakane 411-350 vinyl ester thermoset reinforced with 1.25 and 2.5 wt% Cloisite 30B nanoclay and exfoliated graphite nanoplatelets (xGnP). Dynamic mechanical analysis was performed to obtain the visco-elastic properties such as storage modulus (E'), loss modulus (E''), glass transition temperature (Tg) and loss factor (Tan
First published on September 8, 2009 |
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). Low velocity impact tests were performed at an approximate strain rate of 15 s-1 on notched and un-notched Charpy samples using a drop-tower impact test system. Storage modulus was observed to increase with increasing nano reinforcements (max 40% for graphite platelet/vinyl ester nanocomposite). Loss factor also showed a significant increase of 80% with the addition of nanoclay, and 125% with graphite platelet. Glass transition temperature and loss modulus of nanoclay and graphite platelet reinforced nanocomposites also showed significant improvements over the pristine polymer. Low-velocity impact tests showed an increase of almost 100% energy absorption for un-notched samples with increasing nano reinforcement. However, a 70–90% reduction was observed in the case of notched samples. A direct correlation between impact response and dynamic mechanical properties for these vinyl ester nanocomposites was observed.