An Experimental Study on the Effect of Nanomaterials and Fibers on the Mechanical Properties of Polymer Composites

This study aims to explore the tensile and impact properties (tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, and impact strength) of polypropylene (PP)-based nanocomposites reinforced with graphene nanosheets, nanoclay, and basalt fibers. The response surface methodology (RSM) with Box–Behnken design (BBD) was adopted as the experimental design. An internal mixer was used to prepare compounds consisting of 0, 0.75 and 1.5 wt% graphene nanosheets, 0, 10 and 20 wt% basalt fibers, and 0, 3 and 6 wt% nanoclay. The samples were prepared by a hot press machine for mechanical testing. The tensile tests were run to determine the tensile strength, and modulus of elasticity, and the Charpy impact tests were performed to assess the impact strength. It was found that the addition of basalt increased the tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, and impact strength by 32%, 64% and 18%, respectively. Also, the incorporation of the low-weight graphene nanosheets increased the tensile and impact strength by 15% and 20%, respectively, Adding graphene nanosheets generally improved the modulus of elasticity by 66%. Similarly, the addition of nanoclay improved the tensile strength by 17% and increased the modulus of elasticity by 59%, but further addition of it decreased the impact strength by 19%. The values obtained by this experiment for the mechanical property were roughly close to the data yielded from desirability optimization.

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