Numerical and Experimental Investigation of the Strain Rate Effect on Tensile Properties of Graphene/Epoxy Nanocomposites

In this research, the effect of strain rate on the tensile behavior of the graphene/epoxy nanocomposites was investigated. The specimens were prepared for 0.05, 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5 wt.% graphene oxide and were subjected to tensile tests at different strain rates. The experimental results showed that the maximum improvements in the tensile strength, the modulus, and nanocomposite were 9%, 16%, and 0.1 wt.%, respectively. Also, the results indicated that the epoxy and its nanocomposites were sensitive to the strain rate. The rate sensitivity decreased with the increase of the graphene weight percentages. Moreover, it was shown that by increasing the strain rate, the tensile strength and modulus for pure epoxy were improved by 15.8% and 16.8%, respectively. In this study, the appropriateness and applicability of the Johnson-Cook material model for describing the stress-strain relation of the nanocomposites were examined by a combined experimental-numerical-optimization technique. The numerical simulations were carried out using Abaqus commercial program and the optimizations were performed using the Surrogate modeling. The results showed that the Johnson-cook model is not accurate at very low strain rates. However, the accuracy of the model was remarkably improved by increasing the graphene weight percentage or increasing strain rate.