Effect of corrosive environment on mechanical properties of polymer-based nanocomposite: Analytical and experimental study

The aim of this research is to investigate the critical buckling force of a sandwich structure with the addition of nanoparticles to composite faces in an acidic environment. The effect of adding 3 wt% silica and clay nanoparticles in fabrication of composite is compared in mechanical properties and sandwich buckling; And the critical buckling load is obtained by using low order piecewise shear deformation theory (PSDT). In the experimental study, significant degradation is observed after acid immersion, and the addition of 3 wt% nanoclay shows better performance by improving the durability of the structure against changes in the length and mass of the composite specimens. It is shown that the prediction of buckling is a function of mechanical properties, mass absorption, and βacid in acidic immersion, and to determine the buckling response, the mass absorption diagram of the layers, needs to be available. The results imply that the addition of nanoparticles changes the buckling behavior of the sandwich structure, such that the sandwich with silica faces requires more mass absorption than other sandwiches for buckling, however, this composite face have a faster mass absorption rate, which makes their buckling response almost the same as other sandwiches. However the sandwich with the face containing 3 wt% nanoclay still performs better in improving the buckling of the sandwich plate. The findings of the study indicate that immersion in 5% sulfuric acid for 30 days significantly reduced the critical buckling force of composite sandwiches by 63.81–82.25% under simply supported boundary conditions and 29.44–38.97% under clamped boundary conditions. To develop the LOPSDT theory, Ritz method was applied to for clamped sandwich, witch results have been shown very good agreement in validation with the ANSYS solution. [Display omitted]