24-10-2012, 10:59 AM
Multiscale Experiments and Models for Polymer Nanocomposites
ABSTRACT
This report summarizes our research activities at the University of Virginia conducted under the support of this NASA
research grant from March 2004 to October 2004 and provides a summary of the research to be conducted in the remaining
period of the project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The original research objectives will remain
the same after our transition to UIUC. In the beginning of this program we completed the analysis on the graphite polymer
micro and nanocomposites that were studied at NASA Langley and UVa in the summer of 2003. A publication summarizing
this work was submitted in the fall of 2004 to the journal of Experimental Mechanics and the reviewer comments are currently
addressed. The research program aims at understanding the local interactions between the polymer matrix and hard
reinforcement in polymer nanocomposites (PNCs). The materials selected for this study were PNCs with different fillers
(14nm silica nanospheres or nanoclays) and volume fractions (0.5%, 1%, 2% and 5%).