Prediction of the elastic properties of multiwalled carbon nanotube reinforced rubber composites.

Carbon nanotube reinforced natural rubber composites (CNT/NRs) have been increasingly used in industry. However, due to the large aspect ratio and high curling of CNTs, the traditional theoretical models that have been used for inclusion-reinforced composites cannot be applied to CNT/NRs directly. Therefore, a longer time is needed to predict the elastic properties of CNT/NRs in experiments. In this work, the classical macroscopic model and mesoscopic method were used to predict the elastic performance of CNT/NRs prepared by the latex blending method. Three types of phenomenological models were employed: Mooney–Rivlin, Ogden, and Yeoh. A comparison with the experimental results shows that the Ogden model describes the constitutive behavior of CNT/NRs more accurately. In addition, at the mesoscale, the Halpin–Tsai equation, Mori–Tanaka model, and finite element method were employed to predict the elastic modulus based on the persistent length theory. The stress-strain curves under large deformations were compared with those of the experimental results. Therefore, the applicability of the three mesoscale models were verified for the CNT/NRs studied in this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]