Some Studies on Mechanical Properties of Epoxy/CTBN/Clay based Polymer Nanocomposites (PNC)

Rubber toughened blends of epoxy LY556 and carboxyl group terminated butadiene nitrile (CTBN) was selected as a system for this study. CTBN was used as toughening agent with different concentrations of CTBN with epoxy. 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 parts per hundred parts resins (phr) are the combinations were prepared by varying CTBN content in epoxy. Jeffamine 300 was used as curing agent for epoxy/CTBN blends. Through optimization, it is found that 15 phr epoxy/CTBN shows improvement in mechanical properties, tensile properties and dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA). Furthermore, clay as nanofiller is optimized and found that 3 wt % of clay with 15 phr epoxy/CTBN blends shows improvement in the mechanical properties. It may be due to good dispersion and highly exfoliation of clay in polymer nanocomposites (PNC). The clay reinforcement enhanced the glass transition temperature (Tg) of the material. And Tg was verified by using differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) and DMTA. To understand the interaction (exfoliation and dispersion) of the clay in the PNC, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was carried out for few selective samples. The main aim is to optimize the system.