Polymer Bulletin, Vol.78, No.6, 3009-3022, 2021
Effect of embedded shape memory alloy wires on the mechanical behavior of self-healing graphene-glass fiber-reinforced polymer nanocomposites
In this paper, the effect of embedded shape memory alloy (SMA) wires on the mechanical behavior of glass fiber-epoxy polymer composite reinforced with graphene nanoplatelets (GnPs) was studied. Composites with different GnPs contents, SMA wires number and pre-strain levels were prepared by hand lay-up method. Then, the composite samples were subjected to the bending tests to evaluate the bending strength, bending elastic modulus and healing efficiency. The fracture surface of samples was also characterized by SEM observations. The results showed that the bending behavior of samples was improved to 13.3% by adding 0.2 wt% GnPs. In contrast, the bending strength was decreased by 24.9% with increasing the number of SMA wires in the composite sample. However, the healing efficiency was increased by 57.4% with increasing the number of SMA wires and pre-strain levels. Furthermore, an improvement in the bending strength and healing efficiency can be achieved using GnPs and SMA simultaneously. Moreover, the polymer composite containing GnPs and SMA wires exhibited better interfacial adhesion between the resin and glass fibers.
Keywords:Polymer nanocomposite;Graphene nanoplatelets;Shape memory alloy;Bending behavior;Healing efficiency