Parameters of crack resistance of nanoreinforced polymeric engineering products

Currently, structural elements made of polymer and rubber materials are widely used in various branches of mechanical engineering. One of the leading directions for improving the properties of such elements is the procedure of strengthening them by nanomodification with carbon nanotubes. The analysis of literary sources allows us to state that the process of nanomodification is a reliable tool for increasing the parameters of strength and crack resistance of polymer products. The purpose of this work is to build and numerically implement a model for physical prediction of the properties of nanomodified materials in order to determine the strength parameters of nanomodified objects. To analyze the mechanisms of formation and propagation of defects at the nano-, micro- and macro-levels, the method of discrete-virtual crack propagation was used, which allows for effective investigation of the strength of spatial systems of polymer nanocomposites. As a result of the conducted numerical experiments, it was established that the process of pulling out a carbon nanotube, which is under the action of an asymmetric load, is accompanied by a complex process of accumulation of defects, which depends on the change in conditions load and significantly affects the evolutionary scheme of the destruction of the nanocomposite. The developed methods make it possible to reliably assess the strength of nanomodified polymer materials and can be used in the development and implementation of information support systems for their life cycle elements of machine-building equipment.