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Journal of Adhesion, Vol.82, No.12, 1157-1175, 2006
Evaluation of adhesion property of UHMWPE fibers/nano-epoxy by a pullout test
Ultrahigh-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fibers have poor wetting and adhesion properties to polymer resins because of the inert surface of the fibers. In our previous study, a reactive nano-epoxy matrix, developed by making a modification on the matrix with reactive graphitic nanofibers (r-GNFs), showed improved wettability to UHMWPE fibers. In this work, fiber bundle pullout tests were conducted to evaluate the adhesion property between the UHMWPE fibers and the nano-epoxy matrices. Analysis of load-displacement curves from pullout tests shows that debonding initiation load and ultimate debonding load increased considerably, because of effective improvement of adhesion between the UHMWPE fibers and nano-epoxy matrix. Stress-controlled and energy-controlled models of interfacial debonding were applied for theoretical analyses. Results from ultimate IFSS, frictional shear stress, and critical energy-release rate are in good agreement with experimental results. Nano-epoxy matrix with 0.3 wt% r-GNFs shows effective improvement in terms of adhesion property between UHMWPE fiber and epoxy.
Keywords:epoxy;graphitic nanofibers;interfacial adhesion;pullout test;ultrahigh molecular polyethylene (UHMWPE) fiber