Tensile and flexural behavior of nanosilica filled epoxy matrix based fiber reinforced composite laminates

In the current study, the effect of nanosilica filler and different fiber orientation angles at 2wt% nanosilica content on both tensile and flexural characteristics for glass fiber reinforced polymeric composite laminates are detected. The glass fiber/nanosilica/epoxy nanocomposites are fabricated by hand layup process. Four weight fractions of nanosilica particles (1%, 1.5%, 2% and 3%) and different fiber orientation angles (0°, 15°, 30°, 45° and 60°) were utilized for the production of laminate composites. Subsequently, samples for the tensile test were produced according to ASTM D638–10 standards and samples for the flexural test were produced according to ASTM D-790. The acquired outcomes extracted from this study displayed the utmost improvement of the tensile strength, tensile modulus, flexural strength and flexural modulus and this obtained improvement was occurred at nanosilica contents of 2wt% and 1.5wt% with the values of 280.25 MPa, 17.8 GPa, 346.35 MPa and 18.77 GPa respectively, with increment ratios of 8%, 66%, 4% and 15% respectively as compared to unfilled GFRP composite laminates with nanosilica particles. It also revealed that silica filled composites exhibited better than unfilled epoxy composites. Moreover, the GFRP composites with fiber orientation angle of 0◦ at 2wt% nanosilica content were showed the highest values in tensile strength, tensile modulus, flexural strength and flexural modulus compared with the other fiber orientation angles and these values are 280.25 MPa, 17.8 GPa, 337.38 MPa and 16.74 GPa, respectively.