MODELLING MECHANICAL AND THERMAL PROPERTIES OF CARBON NANOTUBES REINFORCED METAL MATRIX COMPOSITES

Abstract

The research dealt with the implementation of a macro working under ANSYS to enable simulation a set of models using square representative volume element and a MATLAB code using the theories available for predicting nanocomposites properties in terms of longitudinal and transverse Young’s modulus, shear modulus, major Poisson’s ratio, and study the impact of different geometric and distribution of carbon nanotubes on four factors affecting the thermal conductivity of nanocomposites which are length, diameter, resistance between carbon nanotubes and metal matrix and finally the volume fraction of carbon nanotubes in the metal matrix to predict the mechanical and thermal properties of the carbon nanotubes reinforced metal matrix related to this research and then compared. The research used three metals: iron, copper and aluminum, which were reinforced by three types of carbon nanotubes to be studied according to two cases: the first case is the assumption that the carbon nanotubes as long fiber and placed throughout the square representative volume element and the second case, the carbon nanotubes will treated as short fiber. The problem of the research was the understanding of mechanical and thermal properties of carbon nanotubes reinforced metal matrix is not enough and scare, which affect choosing the optimal design for use in the nanotechnology engineering fields because of the difficulty and cost of conducting experiments due to the small size of the components. Modeling and computer simulation therefore play an important role in predicting the properties of these composite materials. The importance of the research stems from the increasing interest in composite materials in recent years as an engineering material. These materials have proved very successful in various fields due to their unique properties. Nanotechnology has become one of the most important and exciting fields in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering and many other fields. It has given great hope to scientific revolutions that will change the way of technology and have now received great attention because of its promising applications. The concept of nanotechnology is based on the use of carbon nanotubes because of its outstanding properties which was the inspiration for many research and scientific publications in this field and become an important element for the development of a new generation of composite materials specifically in the field of reinforcing metal matrix. The results were obtained by using the macro to simulate the geometry of the different models, which showed a good agreement with the analytical results using the MATLAB code. Consequently, the results showed that the effect of the various factors contributed to increasing the effectiveness of the mechanical and thermal conductivity properties predicted by different Theoretical models. Since theoretical models are based on different assumptions, these assumptions also affect such characteristics theoretically, experimentally through various computational methods as well as modeling work using different simulations. The research recommended the need to do more specialized research on some subjects that can be done by these models.