Study on Elastic Modulus Enhancement in Particle Filled Polyethylene

Abstract

Inorganic particles have been widely used as fillers for stiffness enhancement of polymers. In this paper, the filler particle size is fixed, and relationship between filler fraction and elastic modulus has been studied in Al(OH)3/polyethylene composites. By measuring the elastic moduli of composite samples with different filler content, the highest value of elastic modulus is found around 40% filler weight fraction. In distance-dependent elastic modulus analysis the peak elastic modulus of PE is obtained at a distance of 430 nm to filler center, which corresponds with body-centred cubic packing type. Our research may be helpful in improving mechanical property of polymer materials.