Performance Analysis of Nano Composites in Marine Structural Elements

Considering the structural applications of polymer composites and the increasing demand for greater strength and stiffness of these types of composites, also due to the unique properties of Carbon Nano Tubes (CNTs), the possibility of using Carbon nanotubes as an additional reinforcement in a polymer composite have been investigated. In this research, the representative volume element (RVE) is studied in different percentages and sizes of Carbon nanotubes. First, the analytical equations for predicting the elastic behavior of a representative volume element are presented, then the mechanical behavior of element is investigated by modeling the element in ABAQUS finite element software. The main objective of this research is to model and extract the elastic mechanical properties of polymer nanocomposite with epoxy resin underlay with carbon and glass fiber as the first reinforcement and carbon nanotube as the second reinforcement. Axial and bending loading is applied to the element as a displacement and single rotation. The results show that the axial and flexural stiffness of glass fiber-reinforced composite with 5 percent carbon nanotubes (inner radius=2nm) increase by 83.8% and 244.9%, respectively, while those for carbon fiber-reinforced composite and with the same conditions, it is 17.5% and 54.9%, respectively. On the other hand, increasing the thickness of carbon nanotubes by 1.5 nm causes a significant increase in the axial and flexural strength values of the composite reinforced with glass and carbon fibers.