Mechanical Behavior of Epoxy-Graphene Platelets Nanocomposites

Abstract

Various aspects of the mechanical behavior of epoxy-based nanocomposites with graphene platelets (GPL) as additives are discussed in this article. The monotonic loading response indicates that at elevated temperatures, the elastic modulus and the yield stress are significantly improved in the composite as compared to neat epoxy. The activation energy for creep is smaller in neat epoxy, which indicates that the composite creeps less, especially at elevated temperatures and higher stresses. The composites also exhibit larger fracture toughness. When subjected to cyclic loading, fatigue crack growth rate is smaller in the composite relative to neat epoxy. This reduction is important by at least an order of magnitude at all stress intensity factor amplitudes. Optimal property improvements in the monotonic, cyclic, and fracture behaviors are obtained for very low filling fraction of approximately 0.1 wt. %. Similar differences in the mechanical behavior are observed when the composite is probed on the local scale by nanoindentation.