INVESTIGATION OF MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF SILICA/EPOXY NANO-COMPOSITES BY MOLECULAR DYNAMICS AND FINITE ELEMENT MODELING

Materials filled with particles of at least one dimension in the nano size range are of high interest in numerous areas, such as structural adhesive applications. Inorganic nano-particles incorporation can impart attractive properties in epoxy matrices by increasing its stiffness and its thermal resistance, among other properties. In this study Molecular Dynamics (MD) and Finite Elements (FE) modeling were performed in order to study the mechanical properties of nano-composites obtained from glass silica nano-particles incorporation into an epoxy polymer. To this aim, MD modeling of three-axial tensile loading was carried out to obtain the elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio of silica glass. In a next step, three-dimensional FE models of Representative Volume Element (RVE) of the nano-composite was developed by introducing the materials properties of silica obtained by MD simulations. Finally, the considerable validity of the developed method was concluded by comparing the modeling results with experimental measurements.