Experimental Investigation on the Durability of Glass/Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Nanocomposite

The long-term seawater durability of glass/carbon polymer composites that are used in marine structures are compared in a preliminary study. The composites are virtually identical in terms of fabrication processing, dimensions, thickness and fibre volume fraction, and this allowed the effects of fibre type (ie. glass /carbon polymer) durability to be determined. When immersed in seawater at a temperature of 30oC, Weight change measurements show that the amount of moisture absorbed by glass/carbon polymer composite. In this work, the durability characteristics of epoxy Carbon/Glass fibre reinforced laminates with Nanoclay fillers was examined. In this work, a series of test laminates was fabricated using hand lay-up process with symmetrical stacking sequence of (90/0/90)2S. The resin was modified with different Weight % (0.5% – 3%) of nanoclay fillers. The nanoparticles were dispersed into the matrix material by mechanical stirring with 3000 rpm followed by ultrasonication with 50 kHz for better dispersion of nanoparticles. The tensile strength properties were evaluated from servo-controlled hydraulic universal testing machine (ASTM D3039/ 3039M) with alkaline solution and seas water environments. In addition, the fractured surfaces were examined with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to identify the mode of failures. SEM results shows that matrix cracking, fibre breakage, debonding and fibre pull out are the major failure when the laminates subjected to in-plane and out-of-plane loading conditions.