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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Kheng-Lim GohORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
A comparative analysis of the effects of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) and hydroxyapatite (HA) for reinforcing chitosan (CS) is given here. Wet-spun CS nanocomposite fibres, blended with HA or POSS nanoparticles, at varying concentrations ranging from 1 to 9% (w/w) were stretched until rupture to determine the mechanical properties related to the elasticity (yield strength and strain, stiffness, resilience energy) and fracture (fracture strength strain and toughness) of the composite. Two-factor analysis of variance of the data concluded that only the fracture-related properties were sensitive to interaction effects between the particle type and concentration. When particle type is considered, the stiffness and yield strength of CS/POSS fibres are higher than CS/HA fibres—the converse holds for yield strain, extensibility and fracture toughness. With regards to sensitivity to particle concentration, stiffness and yield strength reveal trending increase to a peak value (the optimal particle concentration associated with the critical aggregation) and trending decrease thereafter, with increasing particle concentration. Although fracture strength, strain at fracture and fracture toughness are also sensitive to particle concentration, no apparent trending increase/decrease is sustained over the particle concentration range investigated here. This simple study provides further understanding into the mechanics of particle-reinforced composites—the insights derived here concerning the optimized mechanical properties of chitosan composite fibre may be further developed to permit us to tune the mechanical properties to suit the biomedical engineering application.
Author(s): Wang K, Pasbakhsh P, DeSilva RT, Goh KL
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Composites Science
Year: 2017
Volume: 1
Online publication date: 18/08/2017
Acceptance date: 14/08/2017
Date deposited: 22/01/2018
ISSN (electronic): 2504-477X
Publisher: MDPI
URL: https://doi.org/10.3390/jcs1010009
DOI: 10.3390/jcs1010009
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