Experimental study of the influence of mixing method of nanoclay on mechanical properties of polymer composites and fiber metal laminates

In this paper, the effect of different types of mixing processes of nanoclay on the mechanical properties of glass fiber/epoxy and fiber metal laminates is studied. For this purpose, the nanoclay was added to pure epoxy resin under mixing process by mechanical mixer, high-speed mechanical homogenizer, and ultrasonic homogenizer. Then, glass fiber/epoxy and fiber metal laminates were fabricated by pure resin and modified resin with nanoclay. In order to achieve high quality in the fabrication of laminate sheets, vacuum operation and post-curing in an autoclave were used under certain temperature and pressure. The effect of two parameters of the nanoclay percent and mixing process on the mechanical properties of the specimens was investigated using Taguchi design of experiments. The results obtained suggest that the nanoclay addition at lower percentages has a more effective role in increasing the flexural strength of the specimens. While by adding nanoclay particles in both material types, the flexural modulus show an increasing trend. Additionally, the result of signal to noise ratio showed that in determining mechanical properties of both material types containing nanoclay, the role of mixing process is more effective than nanoparticle loading.