INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION ON THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF NANOCARBON REINFORCED EPOXY COMPOSITES

Abstract

Epoxy nanocomposites have found their path through a wide range of applications in marine, aerospace, automotive and electronics industries. However, epoxy nanocomposites have proved to be vulnerable when exposed to different corrosive environments and the role of nanocarbon in influencing the extent of changes of their properties have been a subject of research in several studies. This study aims at investigating the influence of environmental degradation on the mechanical properties of nanocarbon reinforced epoxy nanocomposites. To achieve this goal, epoxy resin reinforced with nanocarbon in varying proportions were prepared and their mechanical properties compared. The samples were immersed in 0.5M H2SO4, 1M NaOH and simulated seawater solutions for 30 days, respectively. After immersion, the mechanical properties of the samples were evaluated using tensile, flexural and impact tests, respectively. Moisture absorption test was also carried out on the samples while surface morphology of the fracture surfaces was examined with Scanning Electron Microscope. It was observed from the results that the solutions affect significantly the mechanical properties of the samples. However, samples that were immersed in NaOH solution experienced the highest reduction in terms of flexural and tensile properties by 79% and 55%, respectively. The samples immersed in seawater reduced most in terms of the impact strength by 20% while the samples immersed in H2SO4 had the highest moisture uptake. This study established that NaOH as the worst degradation environment for nanocarbon epoxy composite