Abstract Glass fiber reinforced epoxy composite with graphene nanoplatelets, multi‐walled carbon nanotubes, and aluminium trihydrate fillers are fabricated by the pultrusion method. The role of fillers in complementing each other, improving the dielectric properties of the epoxy matrix is not fully understood. The objective of this work is to investigate the effects of nano and micro fillers combination by short‐duration laboratory ageing techniques. A comparison of aged and unaged specimen is carried‐out by impedance spectroscopy and gravimetric analyses. The dielectric properties are observed to be dependent on the interaction between the fillers and the epoxy matrix, also on the relative permittivity of individual nanofillers, dissolved ions that diffuse with water into the bulk of the composites. The composite specimens are immersed in distilled water up to 360 h for water ageing and the temperature is varied from 25 °C to 200 °C for thermal ageing. The impedance spectroscopy of the composites is measured over the frequency range (10 Hz–8 MHz). The observed reduction in the impedance values indicate that dipolar polarization is occurring due to absorbed water molecules during water immersion and mobilization of free electrons is taking place due to an increase in temperature. This study indicates that the effect of ageing can be quantified in terms of changes in the impedance spectra. From the results obtained, the effect of fillers is implicit since diffusion coefficient values are reduced from 5.58 × 10 −9 m 2 s −1 of the base epoxy composite to 3.48 × 10 −9 m 2 s −1 in hybrid nanocomposites. The percentage of water absorption at equilibrium condition is reduced from 0.68% to 0.46% of the total mass.
The present study explores the possibilities of reinforcing High-Density Poly Ethylene (HDPE) + Nano-Clay (NC) composite with locally available inexpensive plane woven bi-directional Silk Fibre (SF) fabric for developing a new tribo material. HDPE, NC & SF were incorporated into produce hybrid laminated composites using a hot compression technique. Further, the additions of NC to bi-directional SF-based HDPE composites at five levels in the range 0.1–1.0 wt-% have improved the tribological characteristics greatly compared to HDPE + SF samples as well as pure HDPE. The experimental results indicate that SF and NC improved the wear behaviour of neat polymer. The CoF of HDPE + SF + 0.1NC over HDPE + SF & pure HDPE decreased by 15% and 30%, respectively. The results reveal that the wear loss of HDPE + SF + 0.1NC is very much lower over HDPE + SF & pure HDPE and they are about 24% and 30%, respectively.
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