Investigations on the Mechanical Properties of PC and ABS Electrospun Nanofiber Embedded Glass Fiber Reinforced Composite

In addition to the high mechanical strengths of glass fiber-reinforced thermoset matrix composites, due to their brittle nature, their impact resistances remain at very low levels. This paper aims to embed thermoplastic nanofibers into glass fibers and see an improvement in impact resistance without reducing other mechanical properties such as tensile, toughness, and bending. Due to the nature of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and polycarbonate being able to enhance impact resistance, dimethylformamide and tetrahydrofuran as convenient/comparatively less toxic solvents were selected to produce nanofibers via an electrospinning technique. For polycarbonate (PC) 25 wt% with (60:40) tet-rahydrofuran to dimethylformamide ratio and ABS 37, wt% dimethylformamide solution proved to be the best con-centration ratios. For the optimum nanofibers, the electrospinning process parameters were determined and uniform, bead-free fibers were embedded into the glass fibers to be used in laminated composite manufacturing. Mechanical prop-erties of the electrospun nanofiber embedded composites highly depend on the nanofiber type and electrospinning time.