TITLE:
Using Image Analysis for Structural and Mechanical Cha-racterization of Nanoclay Reinforced Polypropylene Com-posites
AUTHORS:
Turup Pandurangan Mohan, Krishnan Kanny
KEYWORDS:
Polymer Clay Nanocomposites, Transmission Electron Microscope, Optical Microscope, Intercalation/Exfoliation, Micromechanical Modeling
JOURNAL NAME:
Engineering,
Vol.2 No.10,
November
29,
2010
ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on the micromechanical study of the tensile property of Polymer-Clay Nanocomposites (PCN). Polypropylene (PP) filled with nanoclay is chosen as the PCN. Measurements of optical dispersion parameters (as discussed by Basu et al., namely, exfoliation number (ξn), degree of dispersions (χ) and agglomerate %) in PCN system were carried out using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Optical Microscopy (OM). The experimentally obtained tensile modulus is compared with theoretically obtained modulus values from the optical dispersion parameters and observed a close matching between these values. Also, the tensile values are compared with other standard theoretical models and observed that the results obtained from optical dispersion parameters are suited well with experimental results.