Experimental Investigation on Mechanical Properties of PA6/NBR/Graphene Nanocomposite by Response Surface Methodology

In this paper, the feasibility study of the production of PA6/NBR/Graphene nanocomposite by an internal mixer was investigated. The effect of nitrile and graphene content on modulus strength and hardness was studied by response surface methodology. Analysis of variance was used to study the effect of input parameters and mathematical models. The mechanical properties and microstructure were investigated by tensile test, hardness, and scanning electron microscopy. The comparison of the experimental results and response surface methodology results showed a small percentage of error. The results show that at the different percentage of NBR content, modulus strength and hardness increased with an increase in graphene content at 0 to 2 wt% and the maximum modulus strength (2354 MPa) and hardness (111 shore A) was obtained at the graphene content of 2 % and nitrile content of 20 %. At a low percentage of graphene nanoparticle, an increase in the NBR content lead to a higher decrease of modulus strength so that in graphene content of 0.5%, with increasing NBR content from 20 % to 40 %, modulus strength decreased from 2229 to 1859 MPa. However, for graphene content of 1.5 %, increasing the NBR content lead to decreases of modulus strength from 2354 to 2164 MPa.