M Vakilifard - Faculty of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University
M. J Mahmoodi - Faculty of Civil, Water and Environmental Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University

Viscoelastic and damping properties of a CNT/polypropylene nanocomposite are investigated by means of the correspondence principle and micromechanical modeling. First, A third phase known as interphase is taken into account to model the CNT/polymer interactions. The interphase has two distinct regions named as equilibrium-interphase and polymer-interphase which originates from the van derWaals (vdW) equilibrium distance and the CNT/polymer interaction state, respectively. The CNTs orientation are considered random under uniform distribution. Then, an RVE-based micromechanical model is used to obtain the overall properties of the nanocomposite. The model is examined by experimental results. Finally, the parametric studies, including the effects of the CNT content and the two interphase regions characteristics are investigated on the nanocomposite effective damping moduli, i.e. storage and loss moduli. It is shown that the presented micromechanical procedure can be utilized to obtain the overall viscoelastic-properties of the CNTreinforced nanocomposites. Moreover, the effective damping moduli increase by increasing the CNT/polymer adhesion and/or the thickness of the polymer-interphase. On the other hand the equilibriuminterphase properties have insignificant effects on theoverall damping properties which confirm the weakness of the vdW force between the CNT and the polymer.

Viscoelastic-damping properties, CNT nanocomposite, Micromechanics, interphase