Investigation of mechanical properties of additive manufactured graphene-reinforced aluminium composites

Abstract

Abstract Graphene considered as an ideal reinforcement for metal matrix composites (MMCs) because of its excellent optical, electrical and mechanical properties has important application prospects in materials science, micro-nano processing and so on. Meanwhile, additive manufactured MMCs becomes the hotspot of current research due to the advantages of precise and controllable structure and easy implementation of modularization. In this paper, a two-dimensional rate-dependent crystal plasticity model using the numerical model is developed to simulate the mechanical behaviors of additive manufactured graphene-reinforced aluminium matrix composites (AMCs) under tensile load in a mesoscale. The mechanical properties are described by varying the volume fractions and distribution patterns of graphene. The results verify that graphene is the main load-bearing part of AMCs. The volume fraction and distribution pattern of graphene play an important role in the crystal dislocation strengthening of AMCs. Moreover, it is proved that the additive manufactured graphene-reinforced AMCs have a potential improvement with increased graphene volume fraction and optimized geometric graphene parameters.