An experimental investigation on mode-II interlaminar fracture toughness of nanosilica modified glass/epoxy fiber-reinforced laminates

In this research, effect of adding silica nano-particles on the mode II interlaminar fracture toughness of epoxy matrix composites reinforced with glass fibers was experimentally studied. Hand lay-up method has been used to manufacture nanocomposites with18 layers of 2D woven glass fibers with 40% fiber volume fraction. The nano-epoxy resin system is made of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (epon 828) resin with jeffamine D400 as the curing agent. Nanosilica particles are dispersed with 0, 0.5, 1 and 3 wt.% (of epoxy resin) to study the effect of nanosilica content on fracture toughness. Also a series of nanocomposites with 1 wt.% nanosilica content and contained 55 vol.% glass fibers were fabricated to investigate the effect of fiber volume fraction on results. End notch flexure (ENF) test was adopted for the measurement of mode II interlaminar fracture toughness.The results show that high loading of nanosilica has no significant effect on the interlaminar fracture toughness of nanocomposites while the addition of 0.5 wt% nanosilica enhanced the interlaminar fracture toughness about 36% compared to the neat composites. Decreasing fiber volume fraction improved interlaminar fracture energy.