This review reports recent advances in the field of polymer–layered silicate nano composites. Thesematerials have attracted both academic and industrial attention because they exhibit dramaticimprovement in properties at very low filler contents. Herein, the structure, preparation andproperties of polymer–layered silicate nanocomposites are discussed in general, and finally the effectof clay na...

Milling of fiber reinforced polymer composites is of great importance for integrated composites with other mating parts. Improper selection of cutting process parameters, excessive cutting forces and other machining conditions would result in rejection of components. Therefore, machining conditions are optimized to reduce the machining forces and damages. This work reports practical experiments...

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a powerful characterization tool for polymer science, capable of revealing surface structures with superior spatial resolution. AFM is extremely useful for studying the local surface molecular composition and mechanical properties of a broad range of polymer materials, including block copolymers, bulk polymers, thin-film polymers, polymer composites, and polymer...

Dielectric constant and morphology of BaTiO3-polymer composite films were studied as a function of the filler concentration. The morphology of the films was examined using laser scanning confocal microscopy, which is capable to measure small particle distributions in more details than conventional microscopy. The thin-slice images allowed us to visualize the micronsize particles and the polymer...

In this research, the influence of adding micro- and nano- sized calcium carbonate powders to nylon-66 was investigated. Mechanical properties of micro and nano- composites, including tensile strength, elongation, and Young’s modulus, before and after ageing, were determined and analyzed. For this purpose, micro- and nano-sized CaCO3 particles were used as fillers to prepare micro-composites (c...

This paper reports the structural, electrical and thermal properties of the polyaniline doped with ZnO composites. Conducting polymer composites of polyaniline/zinc oxide (PANI/ZnO) have been synthesized by in-situ polymerization of aniline using various compositions (10, 20, 30, 40, 50 wt %) of ZnO in PANI using ammonium persulphate as an oxidant. The amorphous nature of the composites has bee...

Microvascular networks show promise for applications such as selfhealing, self-cooling, and structural damage sensing. Fluid-filled micro-scale channels have been investigated extensively in the field of microfluidics, but threedimensional networks in polymeric structural materials have been achieved only recently. The purpose of microvascular network integration is to provide a vehicle for the...

Cellulose is the most important and the most abundant plant natural polymer. It shows a number of interesting properties including those making it attractive as a filler of composite materials with a thermoplastic polymer matrix. Production of such composite materials, meeting the standards of green technology, has increased from 0.36 million tons in 2007 to 2.33 million tons in 2012. It is pre...

A three-dimensional micromechanics-based analytical model is developed to study thermo-mechanical properties of polymer composites reinforced with randomly distributed silica nanoparticles. Two important factors in nanocomposites modeling using micromechanical models are nanoparticle arrangement in matrix and interphase effects. In order to study these cases, representative volume element (RVE)...

Since the development of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in 1991, they have received much attention with improved mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties of their composites compared to common polymer composites. This study evaluated the effect of incorporating bundled and unbundled carbon nanotubes into Polyurethane/CNT/woven fiber reinforced composites. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) was used t...