Mechanical Characterization of Defective Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Reinforced Natural Rubber Composites

Abstract

Pristine carbon nanotubes (CNTs) exhibit exceptionally high mechanical properties. However, defects like Stone-Wales (SW) and vacancy which appear during manufacturing process affects the performance of CNTs. In this study armchair type single-walled CNTs was considered and 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 vacancy defects and SW defects were introduced, respectively. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation was performed for investigating the effect of point and SW defects. All the defects follow the symmetric pattern for single walled carbon nanotube. For obtaining the mechanical properties, CNTs were packed with natural rubber (NR) and simulation process has been done. This study exhibits as the no of vacancy defects or stone wales defects increases the young's modulus for CNT/natural rubber composite successively degraded. However, in both the cases rate of decrease in young's moduli observed as different. Comparative study leads to better design for NR-CNT composites.