The effect of nanotubes waviness on mechanical properties of CNT/SMP composites

Computational prediction of waviness and orientation effects in carbon nanotube reinforced metal matrix composites

“…A conclusion is obtained from the closed form micromechanical model that the elastic modulus of CNT-reinforced composites strongly depends on the waviness, wherein, even a slight variation of CNT curvature can lead to a prominent decrease in the effective reinforcing effect [16]. The same trend has been observed in many studies for CNT-reinforced PMCs [17][18][19]. Nevertheless, in the special case of completely random orientation of CNT, opposite result has been presented that CNT waviness does not affect the effective properties of the composite [20].…”

A new method for characterizing and modeling the waviness and alignment of carbon nanotubes in composites

“…In most of the studies mentioned above, the CNTs have been treated as uniform fibres of a sinusoidal wavy shape [5,[16][17][18] or with a simple bow wavy shape [8,19]. In reality, however, it is very difficult to produce nano-composites with CNTs of regular waviness.…”

“…Extensive studies have found that the overall mechanical properties of a CNTcomposite can be affected by CNT waviness [4][5][6][7][8]. Previous investigations have found that most of the CNTs are highly wavy in a matrix [1,9,10].…”

“…To characterize the waviness morphology and understand the waviness effect of the CNTs and micro-fibres on the elastic properties of composites, extensive investigations have been carried out, experimentally [12], analytically with the aid of micromechanics [8,11], numerically with the finite element (FE) analysis [13], or with a combination of the FE-micromechanics methods [4,5]. Although the overall properties of a nanocomposite can be measured by experiment, it has been extremely hard to explore the mechanisms of property variations of nano-composites in this way, primarily due to the great number of influential factors.…”

Numerical analysis of elastic–plastic properties of polymer composite reinforced by wavy and random CNTs

“…Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult in experiments to determine the distribution of these parameters within the polymer and their relative effect on the effective properties of composites [12,13]. Through a modification of mean-field methods [14], some theoretical analysis can be applied to inclusions of arbitrary shape and distribution [15,16], but due to significant simplification, the accuracy of the predicted properties is limited. Besides, computational approaches can provide more accurate information about the microstructure of composite and are cheaper than experiments, and hence are widely employed to model CNT/polymer composites.…”