Load-bearing contribution of multi-walled carbon nanotubes on tensile response of aluminum

Hiroki Kurita (1, 2) , Mehdi Estili (3) , Hansang Kwon (4) , Takamichi Miyazaki (5) , Weiwei Zhou (2) , Jean-François Silvain (6) , Akira Kawasaki (6)

1 LTMEx - Laboratoire des Technologies des Matériaux EXtrêmes
2 Department of Materials Processing Engineering
3 International Center for Young Scientits National Institute for Materials Science
4 Department of Materials System Engineering
5 School of Chemistry
6 ICMCB - Institut de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Bordeaux

We fabricated a uniformly dispersed and aligned multi-walled carbon nanotube reinforced aluminum matrix (Al–MWCNT) composite with minimal work hardening and without interfacial chemical compounds. In this paper, the direct load-bearing contribution of MWCNTs on the Al–MWCNT composite was investigated in detail for various volume fractions of MWCNTs. For up to 0.6 vol% of MWCNTs, the ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of the Al–MWCNT composite increased with the conservation of the remarkable failure elongation of Al. These UTS values are consistent with shear lag model. We also observed an uncommon multi-wall-type failure of MWCNTs during the hot extrusion process. However, owing to the agglomeration of MWCNTs in the Al matrix, the UTS deviated significantly from the shear lag model and the remarkable failure elongation of Al decreased. The possibility of strengthening, without degrading ductility, was demonstrated by exploiting directly the load-bearing ability of individually and uniformly dispersed aligned MWCNTs.

Domaines: Matériaux

Hiroki Kurita, Mehdi Estili, Hansang Kwon, Takamichi Miyazaki, Weiwei Zhou, et al.. Load-bearing contribution of multi-walled carbon nanotubes on tensile response of aluminum. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 2015, 68, pp.133-139. ⟨10.1016/j.compositesa.2014.09.014⟩. ⟨hal-01078286⟩