Experimental and optimizing flexural strength of epoxy-based nanocomposite: Effect of using nano silica and nano clay by using response surface design methodology

The influence of weight percentage of nano silica and nano clay and also fiber orientation on the flexural strength of epoxy/glass fiber/nano SiO2/nanoclay hybrid laminate composite has been investigated in the current study. The response surface design methodology was employed for predicting flexural behavior of new mentioned hybrid nano composite and also to present a mathematical model as a function of physical factors in order to reach the optimum structure of new hybrid nano composite. Using Minitab software totally 20 experiments were generated with 6 replicates at center points and flexural tests were done on 20 prepared samples. Analysis was replicated after eliminating non effective terms and also optimizing was done using optimization option of Minitab software. The optimization results indicated that the best flexural strength obtained from the software was 17.77 MPa which occurred in 3.5 wt% of nano-silica, 4 wt% of nanoclay and 0 degrees of fiber orientation and after preparing and testing five samples average value of flexural strength was obtained 17.2 MPa. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.