Effect of nano-α-Al2O3 Particles on Mechanical Properties of Glass-Fibre Reinforced Epoxy Hybrid Composites

Anil Kumar Veerapaneni; Chandrasekar Kuppan; Murthy Chavali

Anil Kumar Veerapaneni Aarshanano Composite Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh, India
Chandrasekar Kuppan Division of Chemistry, Vignan’s Foundation for Science, Technology and Research University (Vignan’s University), Vadlamudi 522 213 Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh, India
Murthy Chavali NTRC-MCETRC, Tenali 522201 Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh, India

Keywords: alumina, epoxy resin, hardener, mechanical properties, SEM, XRD

Abstract

The present work deals with the mechanical properties of hybrid nanocomposites made of epoxy/glass fibre dispersed with different weight percentages of nano-α-Al₂O₃ powder . The nanoparticles were synthesized by a high energy ball milling technique (60 and 200 nm).. The effect of nano-α-Al₂O₃ size and content (wt%) on mechanical properties, such as tensile, flexural, interlaminar shear stress (ILSS) and hardness was investigated. The addition of nano-α-Al₂O₃enhanced all measured mechanical parameters because of their higher surface area and interfacial polymer-metal interaction. The nanoparticle-embedded laminates showed an improvement in flexural strength and hardness compared to laminate without nano-α-Al₂O₃. Among all the wt% of varied sizes of nano-α-Al₂O₃, the highest tensile strength was shown by the addition of 0.5 wt% 200nm nano-α-Al₂O₃ (167.80 N/m²). The highest flexural strength (378.39 N/m²) Vickers hardness (86.72) were observed for laminates containing 1.5 wt% of 60nm nano-α-Al₂O₃, while the highest ILSS (31.21 Ksi) was observed for 0.5 wt% of 60nm nano-α-Al₂O₃. This study showed that there was a higher interaction between the nanoparticle and polymer resin, which led to increasing the mechanical properties of the laminate. This finding show that diversifiying the application of these hybrid materials was possible by adding nano-alumina.

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