An Investigation on Mechanical Properties of E-Glass Fiber reinforced Polymer Nanocomposites

Polymer Nanocomposite play a very crucial role in the fields of Engineering nowadays because of rapid industrialization and requirement for the new and innovative materials in the market. Polymer Nanocomposite are having better functional properties, light weight, corrosive resistance, long life, larger surface area e.t.c. It replaces most of the conventional materials in almost all the fields of Engineering. It is because of its tailored material capabilities.In this paper, we have presented the fabrication procedure of E-Glass fiber reinforced Graphene Oxide Nano Platelets (GONP) based polymer nanocomposite material by using hand layup technique. We have conducted the tension, compression, hardness, toughness and flexural tests along with these the tests also conducted like SEM testing, to know how the Nano fillers interact with resin. When compared with neat epoxy laminated coupons, the tailored polymer nanocomposite laminate coupons gives better result and thereby increased Tensile, compressive and flexural properties. As we have observed that the addition of little amount of GONP in the material the properties were improved extensively. We have added four different weight percentages of Nanoparticles in Epoxy material. The considered percentages are 0.5wt%, 1wt%, 1.5wt% and 2wt% of Nanoparticles. From the experimental investigations we found that the tensile strength and compressive strength of material is increased which is expressed in percentages as 10.25, 14.97, 16.26, 18.64 and 1.97, 3.46, 5.65, and 11.56 respectively. Apart from tensile and compressive strength the Flexural strength is also increased by the percentages of 4, 19.92, 26.78, and 28.73 respectively. Very little amount of increment is observed in Hardness. More interestingly we observed that the addition of 4% Nanoparticles make the components very flexible and it takes more time for curing. The developed material based on obtained results proposed to be used as the material in wind turbine blade and tidal Energy extraction rotor blade, where load applied is critical. This material can also be used in Aerospace, Defence, automobile and other fields for structural applications. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.