Fracture and Fatigue in Graphene Nanocomposites

Abstract

Graphene fillers are shown to be remarkably effective in suppressing crack propagation in epoxy polymers (see image). The graphene fillers show comparable increases in fracture toughness and fatigue crack propagation resistance to carbon nanotube, nanoparticle, and nanoclay additives at one to two orders of magnitude lower nanofiller weight fraction. This extraordinary property is related to deflection processes associated with the high-aspect-ratio sheet structure of graphene. Detailed facts of importance to specialist readers are published as ”Supporting Information”. Such documents are peer-reviewed, but not copy-edited or typeset. They are made available as submitted by the authors. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.