Influence of carbon nanotubes on thermal expansion coefficient and thermal buckling of polymer composite plates: experimental and numerical investigations

The first aim of this article is to experimentally explore the effect of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) on the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of epoxy-based composites. Focusing on the obtained experimental data, two important conclusions can be drawn. (1) Though the CTE of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is lower than that of neat epoxy, using more CNT does not necessarily decrease the CTE of epoxy polymer. (2) The optimum weight percentage of CNT is 0.3 which can reduce the CTE of epoxy up to 33%. As the second goal of the present research work, thermal buckling analysis of rectangular carbon-fiber-reinforced CNT/epoxy polymer (CFRCNTEP)-laminated composite plates is performed numerically. To this purpose, first, using the obtained experimental data and micro-mechanical models, the thermo-elastic properties of structure are calculated. Then, based on the first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) and by means of generalized differential quadrature (GDQ) method, the influence of CNTs on the critical buckling temperature of CFRCNTEP composite plates is investigated. The numerical results reveal that MWCNTs can strongly affect thermal buckling behavior of composite plates. It is observed that by adding 0.3 wt. % CNTs into the matrix phase, the critical buckling temperature increases between 35 and 42%