PSI - Issue 17

Anurag Singh et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 17 (2019) 857–864 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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Figure 1: a) Pure Epoxy Specimens b) MWCNT epoxy nanocomposite c) Specimen with speckle pattern for tensile testing

3.4 Electrical Characterization

The DC electrical resistance of the nanocomposites was conducted by means of a set-up consisting of Keithley 6517B electrometer (Keithley, Ohio, USA) and a Keithley 8009 test fixture, which provide the possibility to test the manufactured samples according to the ASTM D 257. Even in this case, squares samples made out of neat resin, pristine and functionalised MWCNTs according to different wt% of nanofiller/bio-based resin content were produce having a nominal dimensions of 100 mm x 100 mm and a nominal thickness of 3 mm. The probe’s pin diameter is 2 mm Functionalization of MWCNT’s was done at five different time of chemical functionalization viz. 15, 30, 45, 60 and 90 minutes. With the increase of reaction time amount of yield obtained after synthesis follows an exponential decay as can be seen in figure 2, this is in accordance with the first order reaction kinetics. Reaction kinetics follows an exponential decay and is represented by equation 1, where x is the time of synthesis and y is the amount of yield obtained after functionalization. Following this rate law, amount of yield with the increase of reaction time can be well predicted and hence it shows that with the increase of time of chemical functionalization, respective yield of functionalized carbon nanotubes decreases. = 973.21 −0.015 ( 1 ) 4. Results and Discussions 4.1 Yield Time vs the Time of Synthesis

b) TGA results of pristine and functionalized MWCNT’s

Figure 2: a) Amount of yield vs time of functionalization