| Conférence | The 26th ASC technical conference (2nd joint US-Canada conference on composites), 26-28 September 2011, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Montréal, Québec, Canada |
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| Résumé | Mass transit vehicle weight has grown significantly over the last 20 years penalizing the road infrastructure, fuel consumption and environmental signature. Increased use of lightweight, high-strength and new sustainable composites for mass transit vehicle components is a promising avenue to explore since weight reduction is one of the few ways Canadian mass transit vehicle manufacturers can influence fuel consumption and hence help reduce greenhouse gases emissions. Weight saving opportunities could possibly be obtained by the use of natural fiber and hybrid composites as compared to “traditional” glass fiber based composites. The use of nanocomposites to improve the property of resins without any significant increase in density could also be a possible avenue to obtain the high performance composite with weight saving. In this paper, the role of nanoparticles on the performance improvement of natural fibers thermoset composites was investigated. Different nanoparticles such as Cloisite Na+, 10A, 20A and 30B, Perkalite G100, Nanocryl C140 were first dispersed in a thermoset resin before performing the impregnation of the natural fiber fabric. Natural fiber composites were prepared by hand lay-up followed by a vacuum step and by infusion. The quality of dispersion and intercalation/exfoliation was analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEGSEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Mechanical performance and fire resistance of nanoreinforced thermoset resin and natural fiber composites were also evaluated. The results obtained demonstrate that the presence of nanoparticles can improve the the tensile strength, tensile modulus and fire resistance performance of the resin and of the natural fiber composites. The levels of improvement of the properties were seen to vary with the type of nanoparticles used. |
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