Micromechanical modeling of effective elastic properties of hybrid nanocomposites reinforced by fuzzy fiber containing carbon nanotubes

In this work, the effect of carbon nanotube (CNT) size on the effective elastic properties of a hybrid composite reinforced by fuzzy fiber is investigated using a unit cell-based micromechanical approach. This hybrid nanocomposite is composed of the CNT, carbon fiber, polymer matrix and interphase created due to the non-bonded van der Waals interactions between the CNTs and polymer. The novel constructional feature of this hybrid nanocomposite is that the uniformly aligned CNTs are radially grown on the surface of the horizontal carbon fibers. The CNT and carbon fiber are modeled as a transverse isotropic solid, while the interphase and polymer matrix are assumed to be isotropic. The influence of CNT size on the overall behavior of polymer matrix nanocomposite (PMNC), composite fuzzy fiber (CFF) and hybrid composite reinforced with fuzzy fiber is examined. Results show that size of CNT is more significant for the transverse effective properties of the hybrid nanocomposites reinforced with fuzzy fiber. It has been found that the transverse effective properties of hybrid nanocomposite are improved with increasing the CNT size. The micromechanical model is also used to examine the influence of interphase on the overall behavior of the PMNC, CFF and hybrid composite reinforced with fuzzy fiber. The effective elastic properties of the hybrid composite obtained by the present micromechanical model demonstrate very good agreement with those predicted by the other researches.