Abstract
Carbon fiber composites possessing extensive applications, including aircrafts, ships, cars and sports equipments due to their attractive characteristics such as light weight, high strength and high stiffness. In recent years, nanomaterials were used to reinforce carbon fiber composites to reduce the weight and improve end product design freedom. Therefore the characteristics of carbon fiber composites can be excellently performed, and it can decresses the usage amount of materials to reduce costs. In this study, the three different dimensions of carbon nanomaterials, one-dimensional carbon nanotubes (CNTs), two-dimensional graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) and three-dimensional nano carbon aerogel (NCA) were adopted by individual and two dimensional carbon nanomaterials (ie., GNPs + NCA, CNTs+GNPs) blended to reinforced epoxy resin and epoxy/carbon fiber composite laminates. The reinforced behavior of epoxy nanocomposites and epoxy/carbon fiber composite laminates including static mechanical properties and dynamic mechanical properties were investigated. The experimental results with the literature evidence, the reinforced behavior of epoxy nanocomposite with different dimensions of the carbon nanomaterial have different characteristics. The reinforced behavior of two dimensions of the carbon nanomaterial blended reinforced epoxy nanocomposites was indeed better than a single carbon nanomaterials reinforced nanocomposites. The reinforced behavior of epoxy/carbon fiber composite laminates adopted two dimensions of the carbon nanomaterial blended on the static mechanical properties were not obvious probablely because the carbon nanomaterial unmodified or modified were performed in the wrong way. However, any composed of carbon nanomaterial (ie., CNTs+GNPs, GNPs+NCA) reinforced epoxy/carbon fiber composite laminates have significant performance, including fracture toughness and dynamic mechanical properties. In this study, epoxy resin and epoxy/carbon fiber composite materials adopted modified and unmodified carbon nanomaterial were investigated. The experimental results and the literature evidence indicate that the correct modification of carbon nanomaterial would improve the interface strength between fiber and matrix and agglomeration.