Prediction of the elastic properties of multiwalled carbon nanotube reinforced rubber composites

Carbon nanotube reinforced natural rubber composites (CNT/NRs) have been increasingly used in industry. However, due to the large aspect ratio and high curling of CNTs, the traditional theoretical models that have been used for inclusion-reinforced composites cannot be applied to CNT/NRs directly. Therefore, a longer time is needed to predict the elastic properties of CNT/NRs in experiments. In this work, the classical macroscopic model and mesoscopic method were used to predict the elastic performance of CNT/NRs prepared by the latex blending method. Three types of phenomenological models were employed: Mooney–Rivlin, Ogden, and Yeoh. A comparison with the experimental results shows that the Ogden model describes the constitutive behavior of CNT/NRs more accurately. In addition, at the mesoscale, the Halpin–Tsai equation, Mori – Tanaka model, and finite element method were employed to predict the elastic modulus based on the persistent length theory. The stress-strain curves under large deformations were compared with those of the experimental results. Therefore, the applicability of the three mesoscale models were verified for the CNT/NRs studied in this work.