TY - JOUR A1 - Kalinka, Gerhard A1 - ElAbshihy, K. T1 - Circumventing boundary effects while characterizing epoxy/copper interphases using nanoindentation N2 - Characterization of the size and mechanical properties of interphases is essential when designing multicomponent materials. When nanoindentation is used to investigate the size and mechanical properties of an interphase, a common challenge is that the indenter or the stress zone formed around it are often restricted by the reinforcement, making it difficult to distinguish the mechanical property variations caused by the interphase itself from those caused by the boundary effect. In this work, a testing system was developed that allows determining the indent affected zone and accounting for it in the interphase measurements of an epoxy/Cu system. Using finite element analysis, we confirmed the validity of the proposed system. Nanoindentation was used to investigate the Interphase between copper and two different epoxy systems; amine-cured and anhydride-cured. Nanoindentation results showed that a copper layer that is only 10 nm thick still exhibits a constriction effect on the indentations in its vicinity. The amine-cured epoxy did not show any sign of interphase existence using the introduced method. However, a soft interphase with a thickness of ~1.7 μm was measured on theanhydride-cured epoxy. Furthermore, we show that the proposed system can be used to determine the interphase thickness as well as its relative mechanical properties regardless of the indentation depth. This system can be further used for investigating other polymer/metal interphases to better understand the factors influencing them, thus helping engineer the interphase size and properties to enhance composite performance. KW - Interphase KW - Polymer-metal KW - Epoxy KW - Copper KW - Composites KW - Nanoindentation PY - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09276440.2017.1286878 SN - 0927-6440 SN - 1568-5543 VL - 24 IS - 9 SP - 833 EP - 848 PB - Taylor & Francis CY - UK AN - OPUS4-39128 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zhang, Luman A1 - de Greef, Nils A1 - Kalinka, Gerhard A1 - Van Bilzen, Bart A1 - Locquet, Jean-Pierre A1 - Verpoest, Ignaas A1 - Won Seo, Jin T1 - Carbon nanotube-grafted carbon fiber polymer composites: Damage characterization on the micro scale N2 - Multiwall carbon nanotubes (CNTs) e carbon fibers (CFs)hybrid materials were produced by directly growing CNTs on CFs by means of chemical vapor deposition. For the latter, the oxidative dehydrogenation reaction of C2H2 and CO2 was applied, which allows growing CNTs without damaging the CF surface. Uni-directional nano-engineered carbon fiber reinforced composites (nFRCs) were fabricated by impregnating these hybrid materials with epoxy. The nFRCs subjected to single fiber push-out tests revealed a decrease of the interfacial shear strength (IFSS) of about 36% compared to the carbon fiber composites without CNTs. By means of transverse three-point bending tests performed on pre-notched composite beams inside a scanning electron microscope, the fracturing behavior parallel to the fibers was studied in-situ. The nFRCs showed significantly reduced fiber/matrix debonding while CNTs pull-out, CNTs bridging as well as matrix failure occurred. These results demonstrate that the presence of CNTs in nFRCs affects the stress distribution and consequently the damage Initiation as well as the damage propagation. The presence of CNTs suppresses the stress concentration at the fiber/Matrix interface and reduces the debonding of CFs from the matrix. However, our results indicate that the stress concentration shifts towards the CNTs' ends/matrix interface and causes promoted matrix failure leading to lower IFSS. KW - Carbon fibres nanotubes interface PY - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesb.2017.06.004 SN - 1359-8368 SN - 1879-1069 VL - 126 SP - 202 EP - 210 PB - Elsevier CY - Niederlande AN - OPUS4-42202 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -