Tuesday  |  Salon 13  |  05:00 PM–05:20 PM

#15813, Dynamic Mechanical Performances of Polymer Nanofiber Mats under Supersonic Impacts

Electrospun polymer nanofibers exhibit synergistically improved strength, modulus, and toughness, which stems from the geometric confinement induced morphology evolutions of the polymer chains within the nanofiber. To investigate the dynamic behaviour and specific energy absorption of the polymer nanofiber mat under high-speed micro-projectile impact, in this work, semi-crystalline polymer (polyacrylonitrile (PAN)) nanofiber mat with distinct intrinsic nanofiber properties and extrinsic inter-fiber interactions are fabricated by electrospinning with appropriate post-processing and tested with a laser induced microprojectile impact testing technique. The specific energy absorption, which is the projectile kinetic energy dissipated by a unit weight of target materials, is measured by impacting spherical projectiles with a wide range of projectile impacts from 200 m/s to 800 m/s. Combined with nanofiber microstructural characterization and failure zone scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image analysis, a clear microstructure-property relationship in polymer nanofiber mat is obtained for the high strain-rate regime. Our study shows a promising approach to achieve better dynamic performance in polymeric nanofiber mats by engineering the intrinsic nanostructure of polymer nanofibers and their mesoscale organization in the mats.

Jizhe Cai   University of Wisconsin-Madison
Mohammad Naraghi   Texas A&M University
Ramathasan Thevamaran   University of Wisconsin-Madison