COMPOSITE MATERIALS, NANO & BIO-MATERIALS

COMPOSITE MATERIAL

A composite material is a combination of two materials with different physical and chemical
properties. When they are combined they create a material which is specialized to do a certain
job, for instance to become stronger, lighter or resistant to electricity. They can also improve
strength and stiffness. The reason for their use over traditional materials is because they
improve the properties of their base materials and are applicable in many

situations.

Some common composite materials include:

 Ceramic matrix composite: Ceramic spread out in a ceramic matrix. These are better
than normal ceramics as they are thermal shock and fracture resistant
 Metal matrix composite: A metal spread throughout a matrix
 Reinforced concrete: Concrete strengthened by a material with high tensile strength
such as steel reinforcing bars
 Glass fiber reinforced concrete: Concrete which is poured into a glass fiber structure
with high zirconia content
 Translucent concrete: Concrete which encases optic fibers
 Engineered wood: Manufactured wood combined with other cheap materials. One
example would be particle board. A specialty material like veneer can also be found in
this composite
 Plywood: Engineered wood by gluing many thin layers of wood together at different
angles
 Engineered bamboo: Strips of bamboo fiber glued together to make a board. This is a
useful composite due to the fact it has higher compressive, tensile and flexural strength
than wood
 Parquetry: A square of many wood pieces put together often out of hardwood. It is sold
as a decorative piece
 Wood-plastic composite: Either wood fiber or flour cast in plastic
 Cement-bonded wood fiber: Mineralized wood pieces cast in cement. This composite
has insulating and acoustic properties
 Fiberglass: Glass fiber combined with a plastic which is relatively inexpensive and
flexible
 Carbon Fiber reinforced polymer: Carbon fiber set in plastic which has a high
strength-to-weight ratio
 Sandwich panel: A variety of composites that are layered on top of each other
 Composite honeycomb: A selection of composites in many hexagons to form a
honeycomb shape.
 Papier-mâché: Paper bound with an adhesive. These are found in crafts
 Plastic coated paper: Paper coated with plastic to improve durability. An example of
where this is used is in playing cards
  Syntactic foams: Light materials created by filling metals, ceramics or plastics with
micro balloons. These balloons are made using either glass, carbon or plastic.

NANOMATERIAL

Nanomaterials can be defined as materials possessing, at minimum, one external dimension

measuring 1-100nm. The definition given by the European Commission states that the particle
size of at least half of the particles in the number size distribution must measure 100nm or
below.

Nanomaterials can occur naturally, be created as the by-products of combustion reactions, or

be produced purposefully through engineering to perform a specialized function. These
materials can have different physical and chemical properties to their bulk-form counterparts.

Uses of Nanomaterial

Due to the ability to generate the materials in a particular way to play a specific role, the use of
nanomaterials spans across various industries, from healthcare and cosmetics to environmental
preservation and air purification.

The healthcare field, for example, utilizes nanomaterials in a variety of ways, with one major use
being drug delivery. One example of this process is whereby nanoparticles are being developed
to assist the transportation of chemotherapy drugs directly to cancerous growths, as well as to
deliver drugs to areas of arteries that are damaged in order to fight cardiovascular disease.
Carbon nanotubes are also being developed in order to be used in processes such as the
addition of antibodies to the nanotubes to create bacteria sensors.

In aerospace, carbon nanotubes can be used in the morphing of aircraft wings. The nanotubes
are used in a composite form to bend in response to the application of an electric voltage.

Elsewhere, environmental preservation processes make use of nanomaterials too - in this case,
nanowires. Applications are being developed to use the nanowires - zinc oxide nanowires- in
flexible solar cells as well as to play a role in the treatment of polluted water.

BIOMATERIAL

A biomaterial is a substance that has been engineered to interact with biological systems for a
medical purpose, either a therapeutic (treat, augment, repair, or replace a tissue function of the
body) or a diagnostic one. The study of biomaterials is called biomaterials
science or biomaterials engineering. It has experienced steady and strong growth over its
history, with many companies investing large amounts of money into the development of new
products. Biomaterials science encompasses elements of medicine, biology, chemistry, tissue
engineering and materials science.
Biomaterials can be derived either from nature or synthesized in the laboratory using a variety of
chemical approaches utilizing metallic components, polymers, ceramics or composite materials.
They are often used and/or adapted for a medical application, and thus comprise whole or part
of a living structure or biomedical device which performs, augments, or replaces a natural
function. Such functions may be relatively passive, like being used for a heart valve, or
maybe bioactive with a more interactive functionality such as hydroxyl-apatite coated hip
implants. Biomaterials are also used every day in dental applications, surgery, and drug
delivery. For example, a construct with impregnated pharmaceutical products can be placed into
the body, which permits the prolonged release of a drug over an extended period of time. A
biomaterial may also be an auto graft, allograft or xenograft used as a transplant material.
Quiz

Identify the following:

1. A material produced from a combination of two or more different compounds such as alloys,
metals, glass, polymers, and ceramics.

2. A material possessing, at minimum, one external dimension measuring 1-100nm.

3. A substance that can be derived either from nature or synthesized in the laboratory using a
variety of chemical approaches utilizing metallic components, polymers, ceramics or composite
materials.

4. These materials can occur naturally, be created as the by-products of combustion reactions,
or be produced purposefully through engineering to perform a specialized function.

5. They are often used and/or adapted for a medical application, and thus comprise whole or
part of a living structure or biomedical device which performs, augments, or replaces a natural
function.

6. These materials are also used every day in dental applications, surgery, and drug delivery.

7. These materials can have different physical and chemical properties to their bulk-form
counterparts.

8. It can also improve strength and stiffness.

9. These may be an auto graft, allograft or xenograft used as a transplant material.

10. When they are combined, they create a material which is specialized to do a certain job, for
instance to become stronger, lighter or resistant to electricity.

Key to Correction

1. Composite material 6 Biomaterials

2. Nanomaterial 7.Nanomaterials
3. Biomaterial 8. Composite Materials
4. Nanomaterials 9. Biomaterials
5. Biomaterials 10. Composite materi
LAB SAMPLE

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON MECHANICAL PROPERTIES FOR A THREE - PHASE

POLYMER COMPOSITE REINFORCED BY GLASS FIBERS AND TITANIUM OXIDE
PARTICLES

1.INTRODUCTION
Composite material consists of two or more component materials to obtain a new material with
better properties. The components are matrix material and filled materials (reinforced or
additive). The function of matrix material is to unite the components, assure the resistance to
heat and physicochemical loads, while the filled components are used to improve the
mechanical properties (stiffness and strength) of the composite [5, 6, 7, 10].

The reinforced components used usually are fibers and particles. Fibers can increase the
stiffness, while particles can decrease the fracture, plastic strain and improve the water and
gas proof ability of the composite. Thus, the addition of fibers and particles can make
composite become more perfect, to satisfy more and more requirements of modern
technology.

Having advantages such as: light weight, resistance to heat and environmental loads,
composite materials are widely applied in many fields: from industry, construction, machine -
building, transportation to aerospace engineering and medical engineering. In Vietnam, within
the past ten years, many researches and applications for composite have been done,
especially for polymer composites. The properties of polymer composites is indicated in [5, 6,
9]. In ship building industry, guard ship, passenger ship, fishing vessel of small and medium
sizes are mainly made of composite materials. To improve the water - proof, fire - proof,
corrosion - proof and crack resistant properties of the material, particles often be added to the
matrix besides fibers. This leads to the appearance of three - phase composite which having
three phases: polymer matrix, reinforced fibers and particles. To deal with the structural
problems, we need to know the mechanical behavior of the material, which means firstly
determining the elastic modules of the composite (Fig. 1).
 Fig. 1. Model of three - phase composite with reinforced fiber and particle

2. DETERMINE THE ELASTIC MODULES OF THREE - PHASE COMPOSITE

There are two main methods for determining the elastic modules of three - phase composite
material: experimental and analytical methods. The advantage of experimental method is that
it can provide the exact result for the material’s modules. However, since three - phase
composite is a multi - component material, the experiment cannot illustrate the effect that the
component phases have on the overall mechanical properties of the material. The analytical
method often uses a mechanical model of a three-phase composite material reinforced with
fibers (normally in cylindrical shape) and particles (in spherical shape) to calculate the
material’s elastic modules. It has a principal advantage: the modules are explicitly determined
from the properties and aspect ratios of the component phase. When these factors are
changed, new composite is obtained and their physic mechanical properties can be predicted,
thus this method provides the foundation for optimal design of new material and structure.

Another method is the inductive method, in which the predicted formulas for the elastic
modules are derived based on a large number of experiments. Such formulas are often
suggested by the scientists in experimental physics. But with the appearance of the third
phase, the experiments and the prediction for the variation of the elastic modules from the
component phases’ parameters become very complex. So far we have only seen publications
[10] using this method for two - phase composites (matrix and reinforced particles).

In our previous reports, the elastic modules of three - phase composites are estimated using
two theoretical models of the two - phase composite consecutively: nDm = Om+n [3, 4, 12]. This
paper considers three - phase composite reinforced with particles and unidirectional fibers, so
the problem’s model will be: 1Dm = Om +1D.

The researches on determining the elastic modules for composite material with reinforced
particles are reported in [1, 2, 10, 11, 12]. In our papers [11, 12], the interaction between matrix
and particles is taken into account. Firstly, the modules of the effective matrix Om which called
"effective modules" are calculated. In this step, the effective matrix consists of the original matrix
and particles, it is considered to be homogeneous, isotropic and have two elastic modules. The
next step is estimating the elastic modules for a composite material consists of the effective
matrix and unidirectional reinforced fibers.

Thus, the result for the three - phase composite problem depends much on the models for the
two - phase composite problem and it can have different accuracy for different composites.

For composite reinforced with particles, several methods for determining elastic modules have
been proposed [1, 2, 10, 11, 12]. In this research, we chose the method which takes into
account the interaction between matrix and particle [2, 12].

There are also researches on determining the elastic modules for composite reinforced by
unidirectional fibers [1, 7, 8, 11]. This type of material is often considered orthotropic with 5
elastic modules [1, 7]. The most modern reports with two independent approaches by Pobedrya
B.E. [8] and Vanin G.A. [11] have calculated the sixth modulus of this material, and their results
show good agreement to each other.

Assume that all the component phases (matrix, fiber and particle) are homogeneous and
isotropic, we will use Em, νm, Ea, νa, Ec, νc to denote Young modulus and Poisson ratio for
matrix, fiber and particle, respectively. According to [2], we can obtain the modules for the
effective composite as below:

The modules for three - phase composite reinforced with unidirectional fiber are chosen to be
calculated using Vanin’s formulas [11]:
One of the goals of this research is to do the experiments to verify the results for the modules
E11, E22, G12 of three - phase composite materials calculated using the formulas (5) above.

3. EXPERIMENT AND RESULT

To verify Young modules for three - phase composite, we tested the samples made of polyester
AKAVINA (made in Vietnam), fibers (made in Korea) and titanium oxide (made in Australia) with
the properties as in Table 1.

The experiments were done on HOUNSFEILD H50K-S tester (Fig. 2) using BS EN ISO 527-1:
1997 method. Room’s temperature was (20±50C), humidity was 65%±20%. The samples were
made according to Vietnamese standard code: TCVN 6282:2008 [13]. The dimension of the
samples is given in Fig. 3. The experiments were done at the Laboratory of Shipbuilding
Technology Institute, Nha Trang University.

Table 1. Properties of component phases for the three - phase composite

Component phase Young modulus E Poisson ratio ν
Matrix polyester AKAVINA (Vietnam) 1,43 Gpa 0.345
Glass fiber (Korea) 22 Gpa 0.24
Titanium oxide TiO2 (Australia) 5,58 Gpa 0.20

Fig. 2. HOUNSFEILD H50K-S Tester

 Fig. 3. Dimension of three - phase composite sample

Totally more than 60 samples were tested for 8 different cases of fibers and particle’s volume
ratios (as in the first column of Table 2). Tensile test was done for estimating E11, E22 and in
45-degree direction for estimating E45 and G12. The experiments’ results are given in Table 2.

According to the tests’ results, fiber has much effect on improving Young modulus, while particle
has much effect on shear modulus.

Table 2. Experiment results for three - phase composite’s elastic modules

Elastic Modulus
Composite E45 E1 E2 G12
3012.36 4548.2 2750.58 742.07
5
2996 4673.5 2678.5 720.138
+ 15%W800 + 65% 6
20%TiO2
polyester 2977.7 4695.6 2670.26 700.504
7
2879.5 4825.3 2740.79 700.18
4
3768.89 6208.6 2828.56 719.518
4
3752.2 6330.2 2931.42 715.799
+ 20%W800 + 60%
20%TiO2 8
polyester
3527.23 6347.5 2815.96 713.146
3340.08 6191.1 2923.98 712.51
8
3725.65 7270.8 3018.02 701.868
4001.73 6981 3158.63 702.952
+ 25%W800 + 55%
20%TiO2 3791.82 6959.8 3377.35 705.731
polyester
3582.3 6911 3045.76 701.31
3889.3 6956 3072.91 702.432
4330 7658.5 3230.54 677.701
+ 30%W800 + 50%
20%TiO2 4275 7580.4 3267.62 697.542
polyester
4106.81 7604 3254.59 700.201
2046.11 4725 2939.3 818.577
+ 15%W800 + 55% 2467.39 4774 2932.81 800.125
30%TiO2
polyester 2614.2 5073 3033.59 844.859
2244.17 5231 2997.34 801.6411
4025 6341 3278.59 807.049
+ 20%W800 + 50%
30%TiO2 3819.55 6423 3146.34 801.252
polyester
3738.52 6582.5 3178.75 803.382
30%TiO2 + 25%W800 + 45% 3661.27 6875 3425.62 799.966
 3992.65 6465 3462.25 805.524
polyester 3623.84 7012 3659.15 791.349
3707.86 6609 3547.13 786.753
4342.58 8230 3655.53 768.72
+ 30%W800 + 40% 4229.44 8308 3708.33 761.511
30%TiO2
polyester 4090 8092 3602.52 775.503
4111.5 8792 3670.48 801.844
The comparison between experimental results (average values from Table 2) with
theoretical result (formulas (5)) is shown in Table 3.

4. CONCLUSION
From Table 3, we can obtain that the theoretical analysis and experiment have good agreement
for elastic modules of three - phase composite made of polyester matrix, glass fibers and
titanium oxide particles. This conclusion allows us to apply the algorithm and formulas proposed
in this research for estimating the elastic modules and other structure and material problems
using three - phase composite.

The authors would like to thank the Laboratory of Shipbuilding Technology Institute, Nha Trang
University for their assistance on experiments.

Table 3. Comparison between experiment and analysis

Composite E1 E2 G12
Experimental 4685.70 2709.95 715.72
+ 15%W800 + 65%
20%TiO2 Theoretical 4787.5 2791.0 673.8
polyester
Error 2.1% 2.9% 6.2%
Experimental 6269.4 2874.98 715.24
+ 20%W800 + 60%
20%TiO2 Theoretical 5781.7 2996.7 666.9
polyester
Error 8.4% 4.1% 7.3%
Experimental 7015.72 3152.55 708.65
+ 25%W800 + 55%
20%TiO2 Theoretical 6778.4 3221.7 659.3
polyester
Error 3.5% 2.2% 7.5%
Experimental 7614.3 3250.91 691.8
+ 30%W800 + 50%
20%TiO2 Theoretical 7777.5 3468.9 650.7
polyester
Error 2.1% 6.7% 6.3%
Experimental 4950.75 2975.76 816.30
+ 15%W800 + 55%
30%TiO2 Theoretical 4980.5 3091.6 766.5
polyester
Error 0.6% 3.7% 6.5%
Experimental 6348.6 3201.22 803.9
30%TiO2 + 20%W800 + 50%
Theoretical 5962.1 3310.4 757.7
polyester
Error 6.5% 3.4% 6.1%
Experimental 6717.7 3523.54 795.90
30%TiO2 + 25%W800 + 45% 5
polyester Theoretical 6946.3 3549.1 747.9
Error 3.4% 0.7% 6.4%
30%TiO2 + 30%W800 + 40% Experimental 8355.5 3659.22 776.89
 Theoretical 7933.1 3810.6 737.0
polyester
Error 5.3% 4.1% 5.4%

The results of researching presented in the paper have been performed according to
scientific research project of Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU, Hanoi), coded
QGTĐ.09.01.

References:

What is a composite material? (a definitive guide). TWI. (n.d.). https://www.twi-

global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/what-is-a-composite-material.

What is a NANOMATERIAL? - DEFINITION, examples and uses. TWI. (n.d.). https://www.twi-

global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/what-is-a-nanomaterial.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, June 20). Biomaterial. Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomaterial.

Duc, N. D., & Minh, D. K. (2015, February 23). EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON

MECHANICAL PROPERTIES FOR A THREE - PHASE POLYMER COMPOSITE
REINFORCED BY GLASS FIBERS AND TITANIUM OXIDE PARTICLES.
Research Gate.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268292816_Experimental_study_on_me
chanical_properties_for_a_three_-
_phase_polymer_composite_reinforced_by_glass_fibers_and_titanium_oxide_part
icles/link/54eb04970cf25ba91c847f7b/download.