A Study on Effects of Mixing Methods on Mechanical Properties of Epoxy-nanoclay Composites

In the present work, nanocomposites were processed and fabricated by mechanical mixing of epoxy resin with organoclay using an electric shear mixer. Methods of preparation, fabrication, and characterization of epoxy resin reinforced with organically- modified montmorillonite (OMMT) have been studied. The optimum scheme and procedure were selected and the effects of nanoclay concentration, rate and time of mixing, rule of solvent, sonication time were investigated. After that, the mechanical properties of fabricated samples were evaluated and compared with pure epoxy. It was found that using solvent in preparing the composites improved mechanical behavior. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) results showed intercalation, some degree of exfoliation, and increasing of d- spacing of silicate layers in the nanocomposites fabricated with the shear mixing because of well-dispersion when adding nanoclay up to 5 wt.%. By adding 5 wt.% nanoclay, tensile strength and modulus, and flexural modulus increased 13.4%, 21.5%, and 27.2% respectively.