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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Effect Of Crosslinking On Carbon Nanotube Materials Through Chemical Treatment And Irradiation, Xinyi Lu May 2017

Effect Of Crosslinking On Carbon Nanotube Materials Through Chemical Treatment And Irradiation, Xinyi Lu

Doctoral Dissertations

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) exhibit a variety of exceptional properties, especially their ultrahigh tensile strength on the order of 100GPa show promise for constituting the next-generation carbon fiber. However, challenges remain to translate these properties into useful technology, primarily due to the sliding of the tubes past one another under tensile loading. The work presented in this dissertation is focused on enhancing the interaction between the CNTs and their bundles in a macro-assembly, in order to improve the tensile properties of the material.

Applying inter-tube crosslinks has been predicted to significantly enhance the stress transfer between the CNT components. We developed …


Molecular Modeling Of Aerospace Polymer Matrices Including Carbon Nanotube-Enhanced Epoxy, Matthew Radue Jan 2017

Molecular Modeling Of Aerospace Polymer Matrices Including Carbon Nanotube-Enhanced Epoxy, Matthew Radue

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Carbon fiber (CF) composites are increasingly replacing metals used in major structural parts of aircraft, spacecraft, and automobiles. The current limitations of carbon fiber composites are addressed through computational material design by modeling the salient aerospace matrix materials. Molecular Dynamics (MD) models of epoxies with and without carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforcement and models of pure bismaleimides (BMIs) were developed to elucidate structure-property relationships for improved selection and tailoring of matrices.

The influence of monomer functionality on the mechanical properties of epoxies is studied using the Reax Force Field (ReaxFF). From deformation simulations, the Young’s modulus, yield point, and Poisson’s ratio …