Improving shear strength in nanocomposites through electrophoretic deposition of carbon nanotubes

Nanoparticles are being used nowadays to improve the mechanical and structural specification of Fiber Reinforced polymers (FRPs) due to production of hybrid & Multi scale composites. Electrophoretic deposition has been utilized to deposit a smooth layer of carbon nanoparticles on the surface of woven glass fibers, and later in the fiber/matrix interface of composite structure. Initially, the experimental parameters in deposition of CNTs investigated. Suspension concentration, field strength and process duration effects has been studied on the quality and quantity of deposition mass. Then the best situation has been used to fabricate CNT reinforced glass fiber-epoxy composite to evaluate its short beam strength and also quasi static indentation performance subject to lateral shear loads. Results demonstrates the salient effect of grafted CNTs in the nanocomposites interface on their mechanical behavior. The interlaminar shear strength of prepared nanocomposites has been increased by 42% regarding control samples and 10% improvement achieved in their quasi static performance. It has been shown that there is a range of optimum values for field and concentration due to stability of process and also deposition mass. The stability of process will restrain the field and concentration in the process. In best practices the current density values encountered between 0.5 and 1 mA/Cm2. The effect of field strength was around 8.5 times, but the effect of concentration was around 5.5 times. The current density diagram was steady in stable processes and the first three minutes of each process known as the effective deposition time.