Mechanical and Morphological Characterization of Glass Fiber-Reinforced Epoxy Polymer Composites Modified with Rutile Nanoparticles

Abstract

Abstract Structural analyses of glass fiber reinforced epoxy polymer (GFRP) composite dispersed with rutile (TiO2) nano-particles using compressions molding was studied to reveal the effects of filler addition. Ball milling performed for nano-particles and reduce the particle size from 3 mm to 67.64 nm to enhance blending of dispersions in the resin. The nano-particle added to resin at weight percentage of 0%, 5%, 10% and 15% prior to fabrication using ultrasonic liquid processor. Flexural strength, tensile strength, hardness and toughness were conducted to study the mechanical behavior of the composite. Addition of filler showed improvement in the mechanical properties of GFRP dispersion strengthened composite. 15 wt.% rutile particles have tensile strengths of 228 MPa, tensile moduli of 4123 MPa, flexural strengths of 317 MPa, and flexural moduli of 10010 MPa, respectively. These values are 0.588%, 16.8%, 82.22%, and 96.5% greater than the values of 0 wt.% rutile inclusion. In comparison to the pristine specimen, the shore "D" hardness of materials with 10 wt.% TiO2 is 8.43% higher, while that of materials with 15 wt.% TiO2 is 3.6% higher. The impact strength of the composite sample with 5 wt.% TiO2 is 72% greater than that of the pure sample. Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were carried to analyses morphological behavior, percentages of different elemental distributions and crystalline size and structure of nano-particle in the composite. FESEM was used to reveal the pullout of fiber, damaged interfaces, filler dispersion, and voids in specimens. Hence Ceramic filler inclusion reveals good characterization on GFRP composites.