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Enhancing the Mechanical Toughness of Epoxy-Resin Composites Using Natural Silk Reinforcements

Strong and tough epoxy composites are developed using a less-studied fibre reinforcement, that of natural silk. Two common but structurally distinct silks from the domestic B. mori/Bm and the wild A. pernyi/Ap silkworms are selected in fabric forms. We show that the toughening effects on silk-epoxy...

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Autores principales: Yang, Kang, Wu, Sujun, Guan, Juan, Shao, Zhengzhong, Ritchie, Robert O.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607334/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28931868
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11919-1
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author Yang, Kang
Wu, Sujun
Guan, Juan
Shao, Zhengzhong
Ritchie, Robert O.
author_facet Yang, Kang
Wu, Sujun
Guan, Juan
Shao, Zhengzhong
Ritchie, Robert O.
author_sort Yang, Kang
collection PubMed
description Strong and tough epoxy composites are developed using a less-studied fibre reinforcement, that of natural silk. Two common but structurally distinct silks from the domestic B. mori/Bm and the wild A. pernyi/Ap silkworms are selected in fabric forms. We show that the toughening effects on silk-epoxy composites or SFRPs are dependent on the silk species and the volume fraction of silk. Both silks enhance the room-temperature tensile and flexural mechanical properties of the composite, whereas the more resilient Ap silk shows a more pronounced toughening effect and a lower critical reinforcement volume for the brittle-ductile transition. Specifically, our 60 vol.% Ap-SFRP displays a three-fold elevation in tensile and flexural strength, as compared to pure epoxy resin, with an order of magnitude higher breaking energy via a distinct, ductile failure mode. Importantly, the 60 vol.% Ap-SFRP remains ductile with 7% flexural elongation at lower temperatures (−50 °C). Under impact, these SFRPs show significantly improved energy absorption, and the 60 vol.% Ap-SFRP has an impact strength some eight times that of pure epoxy resin. The findings demonstrate both marked toughening and strengthening effects for epoxy composites from natural silk reinforcements, which presents opportunities for mechanically superior and “green” structural composites.
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spelling pubmed-56073342017-09-24 Enhancing the Mechanical Toughness of Epoxy-Resin Composites Using Natural Silk Reinforcements Yang, Kang Wu, Sujun Guan, Juan Shao, Zhengzhong Ritchie, Robert O. Sci Rep Article Strong and tough epoxy composites are developed using a less-studied fibre reinforcement, that of natural silk. Two common but structurally distinct silks from the domestic B. mori/Bm and the wild A. pernyi/Ap silkworms are selected in fabric forms. We show that the toughening effects on silk-epoxy composites or SFRPs are dependent on the silk species and the volume fraction of silk. Both silks enhance the room-temperature tensile and flexural mechanical properties of the composite, whereas the more resilient Ap silk shows a more pronounced toughening effect and a lower critical reinforcement volume for the brittle-ductile transition. Specifically, our 60 vol.% Ap-SFRP displays a three-fold elevation in tensile and flexural strength, as compared to pure epoxy resin, with an order of magnitude higher breaking energy via a distinct, ductile failure mode. Importantly, the 60 vol.% Ap-SFRP remains ductile with 7% flexural elongation at lower temperatures (−50 °C). Under impact, these SFRPs show significantly improved energy absorption, and the 60 vol.% Ap-SFRP has an impact strength some eight times that of pure epoxy resin. The findings demonstrate both marked toughening and strengthening effects for epoxy composites from natural silk reinforcements, which presents opportunities for mechanically superior and “green” structural composites. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-09-20 /pmc/articles/PMC5607334/ /pubmed/28931868 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11919-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Yang, Kang
Wu, Sujun
Guan, Juan
Shao, Zhengzhong
Ritchie, Robert O.
Enhancing the Mechanical Toughness of Epoxy-Resin Composites Using Natural Silk Reinforcements
title Enhancing the Mechanical Toughness of Epoxy-Resin Composites Using Natural Silk Reinforcements
title_full Enhancing the Mechanical Toughness of Epoxy-Resin Composites Using Natural Silk Reinforcements
title_fullStr Enhancing the Mechanical Toughness of Epoxy-Resin Composites Using Natural Silk Reinforcements
title_full_unstemmed Enhancing the Mechanical Toughness of Epoxy-Resin Composites Using Natural Silk Reinforcements
title_short Enhancing the Mechanical Toughness of Epoxy-Resin Composites Using Natural Silk Reinforcements
title_sort enhancing the mechanical toughness of epoxy-resin composites using natural silk reinforcements
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607334/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28931868
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11919-1
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