Impact Behaviour of Hybrid Carbon Fibre Composites Reinforced with Silica Micro- and Functionalized Nanoparticles

This work investigates the effect of silica nanoparticles functionalized with poly-diallyldimethylammonium chloride (PDDA) and silica microparticle inclusions (1.0 wt% and 3.5 wt%) on the impact resistance of hybrid carbon fibre reinforced composite laminates (HCFRCs) and tensile modulus of particle reinforced polymers (PRPs) via Full-Factorial Design of Experiments. The data were analysed with Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The inclusion of particles led to reduced impact absorption of HCFRCs, except for composites with 1.0 wt% of silica in microscale, which provides an increase of 11.75% in the impact resistance. Microstructural analysis of fractured impact samples revealed pull-out as the predominant fracture mode in 1.0 wt% silica microparticle composites. Such mechanism leads to impact energy dissipation which may explain the increased impact resistance of these samples.