Contact: Oleksandr Hondliakh,Marc Weirich,Sergiy Antonyuk

Funding: DFG (554884501)

To create parts with high physical and mechanical properties, it is necessary to constantly improve the processes of their preparation. Previous studies have demonstrated that the utilisation of ultrasonic technologies is an effective method for achieving the efficiency of dispersion of carbon nanotube agglomerates (CNTA) in the epoxy resin array. Since the remaining agglomerates lead to the nanostress concentration points, the strength of nanomodified polymers can be significantly reduced. As it was showed in many previous studies, efficient dispersion of CNTA in epoxy resin can be achieved by using ultrasonic technologies. The purpose of this research is to determine the efficient parameters for CNTA dispersion in epoxy resins during ultrasonic treatment. To achieve this goal, a methodology was developed for determining the conditions for high-quality dispersion based on amplitude-frequency analysis of CNTA behavior in an epoxy medium, provided that the interaction between nanotubes is carried out in accordance with the Van der Waals law. For this purpose, the APROKS-CNT virtual laboratory for the automatic generation of finite element models of various types of CNTA of arbitrary shape was developed. A series of numerical experiments were performed to determine the critical pressure from an ultrasonic source, at which the CNTA in epoxy resin lose their stability. To confirm these assumptions, a new experimental setup is being developed to study the ultrasonic dispersion method and its effect on the mechanical behavior of nanomodified polymers.