Collaborative Research: Mechanical and Electrical Response of Novel Polymer Grafted CNT Reinforced Copolymers under Quasi-static and Dynamic Loading

这个合作项目的目标是开发智能聚合物材料，可以通过嵌入式导电网络报告10到500纳米范围内的临界材料变形。纳米结构的构建模块将被合成来产生这样的网络。该构件具有类似刷子的结构，以导电聚合物为刷毛，碳纳米管（CNTs）为刷的主干。当纳米刷混合到基体中时，导电聚合物会与基体聚合物纠缠在一起。电刷结构的设计是为了增强响应纳米变形的信号。从导电网络中获得的电信号将比传统的机械应力-应变行为图更加丰富。这些细节将用于验证或反驳先前提出的解释各种准静态和动态加载条件下的力学应力-应变曲线的机制。该项目的成果可以用作智能传感器，包括桥梁、水电站、飞机、车辆碰撞区和智能防弹衣响应系统的结构健康监测。这个合作研究项目将通过与来自两所不同大学的理工科教师和学生的互动，极大地惠及研究生和本科生。学生们将被要求访问当地的高中，在各种负载下演示所提出的导电系统的简单实验。该项目的研究结果也会定期刊登在主要研究人员的网页上，以便迅速传播资料。

The goal of this collaborative project is to develop smart polymeric materials that can report critical material deformation in the 10 to 500 nm range through an embedded electrically conductive network. Nano-structured building blocks will be synthesized to generate such network. The building block has a brush-like structure with electrically conducting polymers as the bristles, and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as the backbone of the brush. When the nano-brushes are blended into the host matrix, the conducting polymers will be entangled with the host polymers. The brush structure is designed to enhance the signal in response to nano deformations. The electrical signals obtained from the conductive network will be far richer in details than traditional plots of mechanical stress-strain behavior. The details will be used to verify or refute the mechanisms previously proposed to explain the mechanical stress-strain curves under various types of quasi-static and dynamic loading conditions. The outcome of this project can be used as smart sensors that include structural health monitoring in bridges, hydropower plants, aircrafts, vehicle crumple zones and smart body-armor responsive systems. This collaborative research project will greatly benefit both graduate & undergraduate students by interacting with faculty and students in science and engineering from two different universities. The students will be asked to visit local high-schools for demonstrating simple experiments on proposed conductive systems under various loads. The results from this project study will also be posted regularly on web pages of principal investigators for speedy dissemination of information.