Experimental analysis of tensile strength of 6-layer carbon/kevlar/epoxy hybrid composite reinforced with nano-graphene/silica nanoparticles

Abstract

The main aim of the present research is to improve the static tensile strength of Carbon/Kevlar/Epoxy hybrid composite by adding different nanoparticles. To this end, two well-known nanoparticles namely Nano-Silica and Nano-Graphene were considered. Also, the total percentage of adding nanoparticle reinforcing elements to the hybrid composite was considered equal to 1.5%. In this way, five categories of reinforced hybrid composites, including 0%Nano-Silica+0%Nano-Graphene, 1.5%Nano-Silica+0%Nano-Graphene, 1.2%Nano-Silica+0.3%Nano-Graphene, 1.0%Nano-Silica+0.5%Nano-Graphene, and 0.75%Nano-Silica+0.75%Nano-Graphene, were studied. Composite samples were prepared using manual layout technique and tensile tests were performed according to the ASTM standard. It was found that the tensile strength increases with the addition of nanoparticles to the Carbon/Kevlar/Epoxy hybrid composite, but these two do not always have a direct and linear relationship with each other. Moreover, it was shown that the addition of 1.2% silica nanoparticles and 0.3% nanographene leads to an increase of tensile strength up to 36%, and this is the best optimal percentage of additive nanoparticles in this research.