Creep behavior of polyurethane nanocomposites with carbon nanotubes

The polyurethane (PU) nanocomposites containing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were prepared through in situ polymerization for the creep study. The results show that the presence of CNTs leads to a significant improvement of creep resistance of PU. However, this creep resistance does not increase monotonously with increase of CNT contents because it is highly dependent on the dispersion of CNTs. Several theoretical models were then used to establish the relations between CNT dispersion and final creep and creep–recovery behaviors of nanocomposites. The as-obtained viscoelastic and viscoplastic parameters of PU matrix and structural parameters of CNTs further confirmed the retardation effect by CNTs during creep of the nanocomposite systems. Besides, the time–temperature superposition (TTS) principle was also employed in this work to make a further evaluation on the creep of PU/CNT nanocomposites with long-term time scale.