PSI - Issue 10

G.V. Seretis et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 10 (2018) 249–256

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G.V. Seretis et al. / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2018) 000 – 000

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Fig. 7 . Ultimate Tensile Strength of all GNPs contents of T2×2 specimens. The average UTS value for each GNPs content is noted on the graph.

Fig. 8 . Strain at break for all GNPs contents of T2×2 specimens. The average strain at break value for each GNPs content is noted o n the graph.

Similar behavior was observed for the nanocomposite specimens with UD fabric reinforcement, see Figs. 9 and 10. Specifically, after an initial UTS increase, that occurred for GNPs content 1% w.t., a subsequent progressive UTS decrease was observed while further increasing the GNPs content. This seems to be a result of the progressively increasing inter-yarn friction. However, due to the structure of the UD fabric, there is a considerably lower number of weaving nodes (Seretis et al. (2015; 2016)), and, consequently, much lower inter-yarn frictional interactions in comparison with t he T2×2 fabric. Therefore, while increasing the GNPs content, the UTS reduction rate for this kind of fabric is quite lower as compared to the respective one of the T2×2 fabric .

Fig. 9. Ultimate Tensile Strength of all GNPs contents of UD specimens. The average UTS value for each GNPs content is noted on the graph.