Enhancing mechanical and morphological properties of glass fiber reinforced epoxy polymer composites through rutile nanoparticle incorporation

Structural analyses of glass fiber reinforced epoxy polymer (GFRP) composites dispersed with rutile (TiO2) nanoparticles using compression molding were studied to reveal the effects of filler addition. Ball milling is performed for nanoparticles and reduces the particle size from 3 to 67.64 nm to enhance the blending of dispersions in the resin. The nanoparticles were added to the resin at weight percentages of 0%, 5%, 10%, and 15% prior to fabrication using an ultrasonic liquid processor. Flexural strength, tensile strength, hardness, and toughness were measured to study the mechanical behavior of the composite. The addition of filler showed improvement in the mechanical properties of the GFRP dispersion-strengthened composite. 15 wt.% rutile particles have tensile strengths of 228 MPa, tensile moduli of 4123 MPa, flexural strengths of 317 MPa, and flexural moduli of 10,010 MPa, respectively. These values are 58.33%, 16.8%, 77.15%, and 92.5% greater than the values of 0 wt. % rutile inclusion. In comparison with the pristine specimen, the shore "D" hardness of materials with 10 wt. % TiO2 is 8.43% higher, while that of materials with 15 wt.% TiO2 is 3.6% higher. The impact strength of the composite sample with 5 wt. % TiO2 is 72.12% greater than that of the pure sample. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were carried out to analyze the morphological behavior, percentages of different elemental distributions, and crystalline size and structure of nanoparticles in the composite. FESEM was used to reveal the pullout of fiber, damaged interfaces, filler dispersion, and voids in specimens. The aim of this research is to investigate the incorporation of rutile (TiO2) filler inclusion and E-glass fiber reinforcement in epoxy nanocomposite materials, exclusively for airplane structural applications. Hence, this method improves the mechanical and structural qualities of the GFRP composites.