Study of Mechanical Properties of Polyethylene/CNT Nanocomposites: Experimental, FEM and MD

Abstract

Designing and developing a new material can be challenging due to several aspects that require consideration. Materia behavior, material properties (physical or chemical), and other material characteristics are the factors to consider when developing new materials. In this work, polymer-based nanocomposite material is developed using High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) as a matrix, Single-walled Carbon Nanotube (SWCNTs) as the reinforcing particles. Moreover, the mechanical properties of the produced HDPE/SWCNT nanocomposites, such as elastic modulus, were investigated at different weight fractions of SWCNTs. The investigation was conducted using numerical (Molecular Dynamics MD), theoretical (Finite Element Method FEM), and experimental approaches. The major aim of this study was to validate the accuracy of the developed MD model and the theoretical FEM with the experimental results. The obtained elastic modulus results from the MD and FEM were compared to see which method produced the results correlating with the experimental results. The compared results showed that MD results were consistent with the experimental results, even though they are not accurate, though the model can be improved. However, the FEM results do not correlate with the experimental results, hence the FEM model developed is not better for the prediction of the elastic modulus of HDPE/SWCNTs nanocomposites.