Parametric studies on effective elastic modulus of nano-clay/polymer composites

This paper proposes a methodology of finding effective elastic properties of nanoclay-reinforced polymercomposites with aligned clay particles. When interphase regions exist between nanoclay platelets and polymer, numericalhomogenization is initially required to identify the properties of effective particle consisting of both clay and interfaceregions. Once the elastic properties of equivalent particle are obtained, Mori-Tanaka approach is employed to identify allthe effective properties of resultant composite. The methodology is implemented with a modular based computer programdeveloped in MATLAB and the variation of longitudinal modulus as a function of weight fraction of nanoclay, aspectratio of fibers, number of stacks, nanoclay volume fraction etc is reported. The empirical results are validated with anumerical model developed in ANSYS using a representative volume element for prediction of the elastic modulus.Results are illustrated with two cases of exfoliated morphology.