Multi-stage micromechanical modeling of effective elastic properties of carbon fiber/carbon nanotube-reinforced polymer hybrid composites

A multi-stage hierarchical micromechanical approach is presented to predict the elastic properties of unidirectional carbon fiber (CF)-reinforced polymer hybrid composites containing carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The influences of CF volume fraction and orientation, type of CFs arrangement, CNT volume fraction and geometrical features, and CNT/polymer interphase region on the mechanical characteristics of CF/CNT-reinforced polymer hybrid composites are explored. An excellent agreement is found between the predictions of the presented micromechanical method and available experiment. It is shown that adding the CNTs into the fibrous polymer composites raises the transverse elastic modulus, while the longitudinal elastic properties are not influenced by the CNTs.