The infusion of nanostructured materials into the matrix of fiber-reinforced composites in order to develop structural components that have high strength, light weight, and stiffness for engineering applications is gaining popularity. These nanostructured materials have high specific modulus and strength, and for these reasons they are utilized in aerospace, automotive, and other transportation industries. However, the development of high performance materials require the need for computational analysis and simulation at different length scales in order to better understand how these materials response to loading. Graphene nanoplateletes (GNPs) called graphene is an individual layers of hexagonally arranged carbon atoms in graphite that have excellent mechanical properties. For this reason, researchers have carried out studies on the effect of graphene on the mechanical behavior of GNP/epoxy composites.The investigators [1-2] conducted research studies on mechanical behavior of GNP/epoxy nanocomposites. Shokrieh et al. [3] utilized both molecular dynamics and micromechanics to predict the stiffness of graphene nanoplatelet/epoxy nanocomposites. They assumed that graphene sheets are randomly oriented in the polymer matrix and MD was used to determine the stiffness of a multilayered graphene nanoplatelet. Littell et al. [4] experimentally determined the effect of strain rate on epoxy resin in tension, compression, and shear. Their experimental data demonstrated the standard for computational results.&nbsp;In the present study, the effect of thermo-mechanical loadings and proportions of graphene on the static failure analysis of graphene/epoxy nanocomposites were investigated under uniaxial tensile loadings. Micromechanical modeling analysis was applied to the model the failures of composites at the macroscopic length scale. The results obtained from previously conducted molecular dynamics analysis of graphene and epoxy, were utilized as inputs in the General Method of Cells micromechanics software to model and evaluate the failure of two-phase graphene/epoxy composites.The computed results for composite elastic allowable stress estimation for the average materials and the static failure analysis at macroscopic levels were compared and these results were in agreement. The study has added to the understanding of the failure mechanism of the graphene/epoxy composites as well as the interactions of the constituents at failure.[1] Lin F, Xiang Y, Shen HS. Temperature dependent mechanical properties of graphene reinforced polymer nanocomposites – A molecular dynamics simulation. Composite Part B Eng. 2017; 111:261-269.[2] Rhaman R, Haque A. Molecular modeling of crosslinked graphene epoxy nanocomposites for characterization of elastic constants and interfacial properties. Composite Part B Eng. 2013; 54:353-364.&nbsp;[3] Shokrieh MM, Esmkhani M, Shokrieh Z, Zhao Z. Stiffness prediction of graphene nanoplatelet/epoxy nanocomposites by a combined molecular dynamics-micromechanics method.&nbsp;&nbsp; Comp. Matls. Sci. 2014; 92:444-450.&nbsp;[4] Littell JD, Ruggeri CR, Goldberg RK, Roberts GD, Arnold WA, Binienda WK.&nbsp; Measurement of epoxy resin tension, compression, and shear stress-strain curves over a wide range of strain rates using small test specimens. J. of Aeros. Eng. 2008; 21:162-173.

Application of Micromechanics to Static Failure Analysis of Graphene Reinforced Epoxy Nanocomposites

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2021/volume/85543

ASME 2021 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE2021)

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