Reasearch Of Alumina Platelets Reinforced Epoxy Resin And Composites

Inorganic platelet particles,such as graphene oxide(GO),montomerillonite and alumina(Al2O3),have been widely used in fabricating composites with epoxy(EP)resin or other polymer materials.With good dispersion in matrix and strong interfacial strength with the matrices,the platelet particles present better reinforcement for the composites.Al2O3 platelets can be prepared by molten salt method,and the size and thickness can be controlled by adjusting the experimental conditions.Because of the great mechanical.properties,the Al2O3 platelets have.been used in nacre-like composites.However,it requires a large amount of platelets to form a brick-and-mortar structure.There are much fewer researches focusing on compositeswith low Al2O3 platelet contents,and,to the best of our knowledge,application of Al2O3 platelets in multi-scale carbon fiber(CF)reinforced epoxy composites has not been previously reported.In this study,Al2O3 platelets were prepared and modified with siliane coupling agent.The silanized Al2O3(SAL2O3)platelets were mixed with epoxy resin and then used to fabricate SAl2O3/EP composites and SAL2O3/CF/EP multi-scale.composites with SAL2O3 contents below 6 wt%.The mechanical properties of the SAl2O3/EP composites and multi-scale SAL2O3/CF/EP composites were studied in detail.The results show that when the content of sAl2O3 was 2 wt%,the mechanical properties,especially the flexural strength reaches the maximum value.To increase the interfacial strength between the AI2O3 paltelets and the matrix,SiO2 nanoparticles were grown on the surface of Al2O3 platelets.The silianized Si02 nanoparticle decorated Al2O3(sSiO2-Al2O3)rough paltelets were then added into epoxy to prepare the sSi02-Al2O3/EP binary and sSiO2-Al2O3/CF/EP multi-scale composites.The flexural properties were found to be the best when the content of sSiO2-Al2O3 platelets was 4 wt%.The interlaminar shear strength(ILSS)of the multi-scale composites increase with the increase of the platelet contents.The effect of surface roughness of Al2O3 platelets on the mechanical properties of epoxy resin and CF/EP composites were investigated,by comparing the mechanical properties of multi-scale composites containing 2 wt%of sAl2O3;smooth platelets and sSiO2-Al2O3 rough platelets.It was demonstrated that the rough sSiO?-Al2O3 platelets are more effective than the smooth sAl2O3 for the reinforcement of epoxy resin and the multi-scale composites by improve the interfacial interaction between.the paltelets and matrix.