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Improving Fracture Toughness of Glass/Epoxy Composites by Using Rubber Particles Together with Zirconium Toughened Alumina (ZTA) Nanoparticles

P Prabhu, Mekkonen Liben, and Alamayehu Wakjira

The research aims to investigate the interlaminar fracture toughness of glass fiber/epoxy composites, which consist of the ZTA nanoparticles and the rubber particles. In general, the disadvantage of adding rubber particles into polymeric resin is the dramatic reduction of stiffness although the toughness could be modified accordingly. In order to enhance the fracture toughness of the fiber composites without sacrificing their stiffness, the ZTA nanoparticles in conjunction with the rubber particles were introduced into the epoxy matrix to form a hybrid nano composite. Experimental results obtained from tensile tests on bulk epoxy confirm the presumption that the reduction of the epoxy stiffness because of the presence of rubber particles can be effectively compensated by the ZTA nanoparticles. Furthermore, the fracture tests conducted on the double cantilever beam specimens revealed that the inclusion of ZTA nanoparticles together with the CSR particle can appreciably increase the fracture toughness of the glass/epoxy composites up to 82%. On the other hand, when the epoxy matrices were modified with CTBN rubber particles and ZTA nanoparticles, the improvement of the inter-laminar fracture toughness was around 48%. It is noted that the role of the ZTA nanoparticles on the fracture toughness of fiber composites with rubber-modified epoxy matrix is different. In contrast, for the CTBN-modified epoxy matrix, the ZTA nanoparticles can synchronously improve the fracture toughness of composites