Reinforcement and toughening mechanisms in polymer nanocomposites – Reinforcement effectiveness and nanoclay nanocomposites

Although the effects of the incorporation of nanoparticles in polymer matrices are deeply studied in the literature, the mechanisms that promote higher properties are not well reported. In this paper, the reinforcement and toughening mechanisms that act on nanoclay/epoxy nanocomposites were studied. For this purpose, two types of nanoclays were used (sodium nanoclay and organophilic nanoclay) in three different concentrations. We propose the...