Purpose

The purpose of this paper is the development of a multiscale model which simulates the effect of the dispersion, the waviness, the interphase geometry as well as the agglomerations of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) on the Young’s modulus of a polymer filled with 0.4 Vol.% MWCNTs.

Design/methodology/approach

For the determination of the homogenized elastic properties of the hybrid material representative unit cells (RUCs) have been used. The predicted homogenized elastic properties were used for the prediction of the Young’s modulus of the filled material by simulating a finite element (FE) model of a tensile specimen. Moreover, the model has been validated by comparing the predicted values of the numerical analysis with experimental tensile results.

Findings

As the MWCNT agglomerates increase, the results showed a remarkable decrease of the Young’s modulus regarding the polymer filled with aligned MWCNTs while only slight differences on the Young’s modulus have been found in the case of randomly oriented MWCNTs. This might be attributed to the low concentration of the MWCNTs (0.4 Vol.%) into the polymer. For low MWCNTs concentrations, the interphase seems to have negligible effect on the Young’s modulus. Furthermore, as the MWCNTs waviness increases, a remarkable decrease of the Young’s modulus of the polymer filled with aligned MWCNTs is observed. In the case that MWCNTs are randomly dispersed into the polymer, both numerical and experimental results have been found to be consistent regarding the Young’s modulus.

Practical implications

The methodology used can be adopted by any system containing nanofillers.

Originality/value

Although several studies on the effect of the MWCNTs distribution on the Young’s modulus have been conducted, limited results exist by using a more realistic RUC including a periodic geometry of more than 20 MWCNTs with random orientation and a more realistic waviness of MWCNTs with aspect ratio exceeding 150.

中文翻译：

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填充多壁碳纳米管的聚合物的多尺度建模：分散，波纹度，相间和团聚的影响

目的

本文的目的是开发一个多尺度模型，该模型模拟分散，波度，相间几何形状以及多壁碳纳米管（MWCNT）的团聚对填充0.4的聚合物的杨氏模量的影响体积％MWCNTs。

设计/方法/方法

为了确定杂化材料的均质弹性性能，使用了代表性的晶胞（RUC）。通过模拟拉伸样本的有限元（FE）模型，将预测的均质弹性特性用于预测填充材料的杨氏模量。此外，通过将数值分析的预测值与实验拉伸结果进行比较，对模型进行了验证。

发现

随着MWCNT附聚物的增加，结果表明，相对于填充有取向MWCNT的聚合物，杨氏模量显着降低，而在随机取向的MWCNT的情况下，仅发现了杨氏模量的微小差异。这可能归因于聚合物中MWCNT的浓度低（0.4 Vol。％）。对于低MWCNTs浓度，相间对杨氏模量的影响似乎可以忽略不计。此外，随着MWCNT波纹度的增加，观察到填充有取向的MWCNT的聚合物的杨氏模量显着降低。在MWCNTs随机分散到聚合物中的情况下，数值和实验结果均被证明与杨氏模量一致。

实际影响

包含纳米填料的任何系统均可采用所使用的方法。

创意/价值

尽管已经进行了一些有关MWCNTs分布对杨氏模量的影响的研究，但是通过使用更实际的RUC（包括超过20个具有随机取向的MWCNT的周期性几何形状和更实际的，长宽比超过MWCNTs的波纹度），结果有限。 150