Effect of the Nanostrength® M53 on Elastic Properties of Glass Fiber Reinforced Acrylic Thermoplastic Resin

This paper aims to study the elastic properties of glass fibers reinforced acrylic thermoplastic resin-based Nanostrength® M53. The acrylic resin was filled with three weight fractions ( \({5}\) , \({10}\) and 15 wt % \(\text{)}\) of the Nanostrength® M53. The effect of Nanostrength® M53 on the elastic properties was studied using tensile tests and finite element method-based RVEs by means of Digimat-FE. For this purpose, platelet inclusions and three aspect ratios (AR) were considered for microstructures reconstruction. A multi-scales homogenization scheme was used for the determination of the effective elastic properties using Digimat-FE solver. From the experimental and numerical results, the elastic properties decreased slightly while the weight fraction (wt %) of the Nanostrength® M53 increased in the composites. The loss in Young modulus was estimated at about \(\text{9.5}\) to 10% according to the Nanostrength weight fractions of 10 wt % and the comparison of the elastic properties was consistent. The use of the Nanostrength® M53 would then be a source of a slight loss of elastic properties, however, the Nanostrengths® M53 were suitable for many applications that needed an increase in resistance to crack propagation, and in the literature, the laminate composites filled with 10 wt % of Nanostrength® M53 depicted better low-velocity impact resistance.