Understanding the interfacial interaction of TiO₂ nanoparticles filled glass fiber/epoxy composites through dynamic mechanical analysis

Abstract

In a multi-component system, the interfacial interactions between the various components trigger the behavior of the composite under external loading and thus determine the bulk properties of the material. In the present work, composite laminates made from TiO2 modified epoxy reinforced with glass fiber are subjected to thermal loading and the effort is made to analyze the interfacial interactions through the experimental values of storage modulus, loss modulus and tan delta. The loading of TiO2 nanoparticles in the epoxy resin is varied to also understand the effect of nanoparticle addition on the interfacial interactions through DMA. The addition of TiO2 nanoparticles helped to increase the storage and loss modulus by improving the rigidity of the polymeric chain. To understand the effect of varying the loading of TiO2 nanoparticles and to gauge the optimum wt.% addition of such nanoparticle, Tan delta, the degree of entanglement and the coefficient of the effectiveness of the nanofiller is found and the results indicate that the laminates successfully withstand the applied thermal load when the TiO2 loading is kept at 2 wt.%. This optimum nanoparticle loading wt.% is further validated through the adhesion factor which is found with the help of Tan delta values.