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

该合作项目的目标是开发智能聚合物材料，通过嵌入的导电网络报告10到500 nm范围内的材料临界变形。将合成纳米结构的构建块来生成这样的网络。构建块具有刷状结构，以导电聚合物为刷子，碳纳米管(CNT)为刷子的主干。当纳米刷混合到主体基质中时，导电聚合物将与主体聚合物缠绕在一起。刷子结构被设计为增强响应纳米变形的信号。从导电网络获得的电信号将比传统的机械应力-应变行为曲线更加详细。这些细节将被用来验证或驳斥先前提出的解释各种类型的准静态和动态加载条件下的机械应力-应变曲线的机理。该项目的成果可用于智能传感器，包括桥梁、水电站、飞机、车辆皱缩区和智能防弹衣响应系统中的结构健康监测。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，极大地造福于研究生和本科生。学生们将被要求参观当地的高中，以演示在不同负载下对拟议的导电系统进行的简单实验。这项项目研究的结果还将定期张贴在主要调查人员的网页上，以便迅速传播信息。

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.