Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites offer very high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios. As a result, the aerospace industry is making a major effort to incorporate an increasing number of composite materials into various components and structures. However, machining of FRP composites is one of the most difficult and least understood areas in manufacturing technology. Thus, ...

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), discovered by Japanese scientist Sumio Iijima, have outstanding material properties such as mechanical, thermal, electrical, and magnetic properties. For example, CNTs are not only lighter than common irons, but also 100 times stronger than the irons. However, CNTs are so tiny, that is, surface area per volume is relatively large. Consequently, they tend to agglomerate....

This article examines the effect of interfacial load transfer on the stress distribution in carbon nanotube/polymer composites through a stress analysis of the nanotube/matrix system. Both isostrain and isostress loading conditions are investigated. The nanotube is modeled by the molecular structural mechanics method at the atomistic level. The matrix is modeled by the finite element method, an...

This paper focuses on application of co-axial electrospinning technique to the development of nanofiber reinforced transparent composites. Investigations have been done on fabrication and functionalization of the transparent composites with improved mechanical properties, thermal properties and shielding ability for ultraviolet radiations. In the fabrication, PMMA, a polymer with excellent visi...

It is investigated how figures of merits of nanocomposites are affected by structural and interaction length scales, Aside from macroscopic effects without characteristic lengths scales and atomic-scale quantum-mechanical interactions there are nanoscale interactions that reflect a competition between different energy contributions. We consider three systems, namely dielectric media, carbon-bla...

Glass fiber reinforced polymer composites are finding its increased applications in variety of engineering applications such as aerospace, automobile, electronics and other industries. However, the users of FRP are facing difficulties to machine it, because of fiber delamination, fiber pull out, short tool life, matrix debonding and formation of powder like chips. The present investigation focu...

This work addresses the assessment of the electromagnetic disturbance induced by a composite barrier—fencing airport structures—to radio-communication electromagnetic waves. The barrier is composed of glass fiber reinforced polymer GFRP tubular elements installed into a concrete base. Based on the electromagnetic properties of constituent materials, numerical analyses describing the electromagn...

Alpha-grass was studied as the reinforcement in a starch-based polymer matrix. Mater-bi®-Y was chosen as a matrix due to its Young’s modulus, in line with that of polypropylene. The test specimens were injection molded and tensile tested. The obtained results were compared to glass fiber reinforced polypropylene. The reinforcing fibers increased the Young’s modulus significantly, obtaining valu...

A fiber’s efficiency in a short-fiber composite can be accurately solved by shear-lag methods, which can account for fiber geometry, an imperfect interface (or interphase), and extend to low volume fractions. Such an analysis was used to evaluate the aspect ratio requirements for singlewalled nanotubes (SWNT) in a polymeric composite and contrast it to conventional fibers. The aspect ratio requ...

Synthetic hydroxyapatite (HA) whiskers have been utilized as a new, biocompatible reinforcement for orthopedic biomaterials. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) was reinforced with either the synthesized HA whiskers or a commercially available spherical HA powder using a novel powder processing technique that facilitated uniform dispersion of the reinforcements in the matrix prior to compression m...