Enhancing the Viscoelastic Performance of Carbon Fiber Composites by Incorporating CNTs and ZnO Nanofillers

Abstract

Carbon fiber reinforced plastic composites (CFRPs) possess superior elastic mechanical properties. However, CFRPs lack sufficient viscoelastic performance, such as damping and creep resistance. In an effort to improve these properties, in this study, hybrid multiscale composites with various combinations of zinc oxide nanorods (ZnO) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were deposited at the interface of carbon fiber laminae. The viscoelastic properties of the corresponding composites were characterized via dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) during both temperature and frequency sweeps. The creep activation energy for each composite configuration was also calculated. The DMA temperature sweep analysis reported that the composite incorporating both ZnO and CNTs exhibited the highest improvements in all viscoelastic properties. This composite also attained better creep resistance, evident by the highest activation energy. The DMA frequency sweep analysis revealed that composites incorporating a single nanofiller improves the viscoelastic properties more than the combined nanofiller composite. Despite these improvements in the viscoelastic properties, the non-uniform dispersion and agglomerations of the nanofillers affected some of the elastic properties negatively, such as the storage modulus.

Keywords

• Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanorods
• Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs)
• damping
• thermal activation energy (Δ<i>H</i>)
• scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
• glass transition temperature (<i>T_g</i>)