Agglomeration and interphase-influenced effective elastic properties of Metal/Graphene nanocomposites: A developed mean-field model

The strength of metallic nanocomposites structures can be greatly improved by adding nanofillers to the matrix. However, there is a discrepancy between the conventional theories and the experimental evidence on the effect of nanofiller loading on the strength of the nanocomposite. The conventional theories predict that the strength increases with the nanofiller loading, but the experimental evidence shows that there is an optimal nanofiller loading beyond which the strength does not improve much. This discrepancy, especially at high filler loadings, is due to the neglect of the agglomeration and the interphase region formation in the composite structure modeling. In this paper, we propose a new micromechanical model based on mean-field theory to examine how the agglomeration and the interphase region influence the elastic modulus of metal/graphene nanocomposites (MGNs). We also explore how other factors, such as interphase region thickness and strength, graphene size, and metallic matrix elastic modulus, influence the elastic modulus of MGNs. We present a mathematical model that describes how the thickness and modulus of the interphase layer of graphene nanoplatelets change due to agglomeration. This model allows us to reproduce the parabolic behavior of the elastic modulus of the composite, which is more consistent with the experimental results.