Synergistic effect of graphene nanosheets and copper oxide nanoparticles on mechanical and thermal properties of composites: Experimental and simulation investigations

•Incorporated glass/epoxy composites with single and hybrid loading of CuO and Gr nanoparticles were fabricated using hand-lay-up method.•Mechanical and thermal properties of fabricated composite specimens were investigated.•The results showed that the addition ion of hybrid CuO and Gr can enhanced both mechanical and thermal properties of fabricated specimens, simultaneously.•Finite elements modeling were employed to investigate the flexural behavior of enhanced composites in this study. In this study, the synergetic effects of graphene nanosheets (Gr) and copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles and the hybrid incorporation of both nanoparticles on the mechanical and thermal properties of 8-layer glass/epoxy composites are investigated. Also, the method of hand-lay-up is used and the tensile strength, three-point bending, and low velocity impact tests are performed to study their mechanical properties. Also, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) analysis are conducted to study the structure and the morphological behavior of nanoparticles. Finally, the obtained result is that by adding the combination of both nanoparticles to the polymer and fibers, the tensile properties increase about 32 %, its flexural properties increase about 30%. The SEM images show that the less diffuse the copper nanoparticles on the sample surface, the better the activity and dispersion of the graphene nanosheets. The obtained results show that the stress–strain diagram for the sample containing the simultaneous combination of copper and graphene has the lowest stress and yield stress while the pure sample with the highest load tolerance and then the sample contain copper nanoparticles. Also, the interpretation of the obtained results in comparison with the results of other researches shows that the heat transfer behavior is uniformly about 0.1 to 0.3 and the maximum heat transfer rate is 0.38. The results showed that the addition of hybrid CuO and Gr nanoparticles into composite specimens can enhanced both mechanical and thermal properties of fabricated specimens, simultaneously. The equivalent properties of the matrix and graphene nanosheet obtained from the FEM validated by experimental experiments are considered as independent parameters. This equivalent property along with the mechanical properties of the fibers is placed in a quasi-experimental Halpin-Tsaiequation to obtain an estimate of the mechanical properties of the whole nanocomposite.