Experimental and computational micro–mechanical investigations of compressive properties of polypropylene/multi–walled carbon nanotubes nanocomposite foams

The compressive behavior of nanocomposite foams is studied by both experimental and computational micro-mechanics approaches with the aim of providing an efficient computational model for this kind of material.

The nanocomposites based on polypropylene (PP) and different contents of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are prepared by melt mixing method. The nanocomposite samples are foamed using super-critical carbon dioxide (ScCO2) as blowing agent at different soaking temperatures. The influence of this foaming parameter on the morphological characteristics of the foam micro-structure is discussed. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) measurements are used to quantify the crystallinity degree of both nanocomposites and foams showing that the crystallinity degree is reduced after the foaming process. This modification leads to mechanical properties of the foam cell walls that are different from the raw nanocomposite PP/CNTs material. Three--point bending tests are performed on the latter to measure the flexural modulus in terms of the crystallinity degree. Uniaxial compression tests are then performed on the foamed samples under quasi-static conditions in order to extract the macro-scale compressive response.

Next, a two-level multi-scale approach is developed to model the behavior of the foamed nanocomposite material. On the one hand, the micro-mechanical properties of nanocomposite PP/CNTs cell walls are evaluated from a theoretical homogenization model accounting for the micro-structure of the semi-crystalline PP, for the degree of crystallinity, and for the CNT volume fraction. The applicability of this theoretical model is demonstrated via the comparison with experimental data from the described experimental measurements and from literature. On the other hand, the macroscopic behavior of the foamed material is evaluated using a computational micro-mechanics model using tetrakaidecahedron unit cells and periodic boundary conditions to estimate the homogenized properties. The unit cell is combined with several geometrical imperfections in order to capture the elastic collapse of the foamed material. The numerical results are compared to the experimental measurements and it is shown that the proposed unit cell computational micro-mechanics model can be used to estimate the homogenized behavior, including the linear and plateau regimes, of nanocomposite foams.