Toughness of a polymer is a key material property for energy absorbing capability for various engineering applications.
Significant effort has been made to improve toughness of a polymer and hence increase the energy absorbing capability;
typically rigid-particles in thermoplastics or rubbery modifiers in a brittle polymer matrix. The focus of this study is to
investigate toughening mechanisms of a thermoplastic polymer composite. Micron-size thermoplastic particle reinforced
polycarbonate (PC) composite materials was fabricated via a solution mixing method. The mechanical properties of the
polymer composites were characterized in tensile testing while the acoustic emission was monitored to assess the
material failure modes during the tensile test. Substantial improvement in tensile toughness was observed for the
polymer composites and the toughening mechanisms responsible for the improvement were identified and quantified for
each contribution to the observation.
Thermoplastic polymers are often reinforced by adding short fibers to improve mechanical properties including Young's
modulus and tensile strength of the polymers. In many engineering applications, energy absorbing characteristics in such
particulate polymers is known to be a very important property to be considered in composite designs, and meanwhile
debonding at the interface between fiber and matrix in the composites may affect the energy absorption properties. Here,
the focus of this study is to employ a semi-empirical approach to determine the debonding stress and investigate the
effect of the debonding stress on energy absorbing properties of short glass fiber reinforced polycarbonate composites.
Glass short fiber reinforced polycarbonate composites are fabricated via a solution mixing technique. Tensile testing and
acoustic emission measurement are simultaneously performed for the polycarbonate composites. The test results
including toughness are compared for the composites over neat polycarbonate. Also the local debonding stress in the
vicinity of each glass fiber in composites is estimated by combining modeling and experiments. A finite element model
is developed to determine local debonding stress at the interface between the fiber and matrix. The local debonding
stress appears to considerably affect the toughness of the composites.
The focus of this study was to experimentally investigate spherically shaped micron-size particles reinforced polymethyl
methacrylate (PMMA) and polycarbonate (PC) polymer composites for improving energy absorbing capabilities such as
toughness and low-velocity impact resistance. In this study, a solution mixing method was developed to fabricate both
PMMA and PC polymer composites with spherically shaped micron-size polyamide- nylon 6 (PA6) particles inclusions.
The morphology of the fracture surfaces of polymer composites was examined by using optical microscopy and
scanning electron microscopy. Strain-rate dependent response of both PMMA and PC polymer composites was
investigated by characterizing tensile and flexural properties. Low-velocity penetration testing was performed for both
polymer composites and the key results observed for energy absorption capabilities are discussed in this study.
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