Tensile and flexural properties of montmorillonite nanoclay reinforced epoxy resin composites

Abstract

In this work, montmorillonite (MMT) nanoclay reinforced epoxy resin was prepared to study the effect of nano filler on tensile and flexural properties of its nanocomposite. MMT was first sonicated for 2 hours with an acetone where the ratio was 50 mL acetone: 1g clay. After being sonicated the clay was added to an epoxy resin matrix at 80 °C and mixed until the acetone was removed. Tensile and flexural tests were investigated to understand the effect of clay on the mechanical properties of MMT reinforced epoxy nanocomposite. In general, the mechanical properties of MMT/epoxy nanocomposites were slightly increased as the clay loading was increased up to 1 phr. However, for the amount of nanoclay more than 1 phr the result showed significantly decrease in mechanical properties. It was found that by adding the nanoclay up to 1 phr, the Young’s and flexural modulus increased around 6.75% and 6.61%, respectively. Since the nanoclay has higher elastic modulus as compared to epoxy resin, the addition of clay increased the modulus of its nanocomposites. On the other hand, at 2 phr of nanoclay the tensile strength, Young’s modulus, flexural strength and flexural modulus deceased around 44.12%, 17.24%, 17.84% and 10.77% respectively compared to pure epoxy. For more than 1 phr of filler the clay distributions might not be well dispersed and thus more agglomerations occurred in the composites. It can be concluded that, 1 phr of MMT filler was the optimum amount that can be reinforced with epoxy resin in term of tensile and flexural properties.