Effect of GS stacking on the effective elastic modulus of carbon fiber reinforced GS-Al nanocomposites

This research article aims to estimate the consequence of graphene sheet (GSs) reinforcement in carbon fiber composite on the elastic modulus of the composite. Aluminum (Al) is taken as matrix material. Molecular dynamics (MD) approach is employed to perform the nanoscale modeling of the GS-embedded Al nanocomposite. The resulting elastic modulus of nanocomposite is further utilized to estimate the elastic modulus of nanocomposite at micro-and macro-scale. At higher scales, i.e. micro- and macro-scale, semi-empirical and analytical methods have been utilized to calculate the elastic modulus of the composite. The elastic moduli of carbon fiber-embedded GS-Al nanocomposites are found to be enhanced relative to the pristine carbon fiber-reinforced composites, irrespective of stacked or non-stacked GSs. It is established that stacking of GSs only affects marginally the elastic moduli of carbon fiber-reinforced Al composites.

Automated summary

This research article estimates the impact of graphene sheet reinforcement on the elastic modulus of carbon fiber composites. The study models graphene sheet-embedded aluminum nanocomposites at the nanoscale using molecular dynamics, and then uses the resulting elastic modulus to estimate the elastic modulus at micro and macro scales. The results show that the elastic modulus of carbon fiber-embedded graphene sheet-aluminum nanocomposites is increased compared to the original carbon fiber-reinforced composites, regardless of whether the graphene sheets are stacked or not.