Development and Characterization of Hybrid Polymer Matrix Nano Composites

Abstract

In the recent years, due to demands on high performance engineering materials, the industry has to change the needs of metallic materials with polymer materials. The change leads to many advantages and reduction of cost. Now a day the polymer based composite materials are most popular tribo-engineering materials and are invariably used in automotive and other industries due to lower densities, high stiffness to weight ratio and high strength to weight ratio as compared to traditional engineering materials. In order to reduce the cost of fabrication and to make them light weight composite material, nano materials were added as reinforcements with the polymer. newlineIn this thesis, whole spectrum of graphene nano silica reinforced epoxy composites were presented an attempt is made to study the potential uses nano materials as reinforcements with the epoxy. The focus of the research is divided into four steps. The first step deals with the preparation of nano composite. The second step deals with the physical and mechanical properties of the prepared composite material. The third step presents the dynamic mechanic analysis while final step reveals the tribological properties and SEM analysis of worn-out surfaces. The Dynamic mechanical analysis is dealing under single and dual cantilever modes. The tests were carried out according to the ASTM standards. newlineWater absorption and thickness swelling behaviour of graphene and nano silica reinforced epoxy composite was investigated. The results show that thickness swelling (TS) has a similar trend as the water absorption and thickness swelling is increasing as the nano silica content was increased and the sample with higher thickness swelling indicates higher water absorption. Mechanical properties were observed experimentally. A general trend was observed. It was clearly viewed that mechanical properties are increasing with the increase in content of nano silica from 0% wt. to 16% wt. and then a starts decreasing beyond 16% nano silica content. Dynamic mechanical analysis was per