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While developing new polymers, a high level of stiff and simultaneously tough material behavior is an important goal. This study shows a new approach to optimize the stiffness/toughness behavior of polyamide 6 (PA 6) by incorporating both stiff and elastomeric nanofillers during melt compounding. For stiffness enhancement of PA 6, an organic-modified layered silicate (organoclay) was used, whereas to compensate for the toughness properties, a nanostructured PA 6/polyether block copolymer (PA 6-copo) was applied. In the first step, binary nanocomposites have been investigated whereby correlations between morphological and mechanical properties have been derived. Subsequently, these results have been used to adapt the processing conditions for the ternary nanocomposites. Despite a considerable interaction of both nanofillers the stiffness/toughness balance of the PA 6 nanocomposite has been optimized significantly. At a filler content of only 8 mass% organoclay and 8.3 mass% PA 6-copo, Young's modulus and tensile strength of PA 6 could be increased by 55% and 18%, respectively. In addition, the notched impact strength of PA 6 was enhanced substantially by 58%. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 54:247-254, 2014. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, numerical and analytical models are chosen to study reinforcement effect of nanolayered silicate modified polyamide 6 (PA 6) composites at ambient temperature. A numerical self-consistent unit cell model in conjunction with finite element method is applied to predict the stiffness of this polymer nanocomposite, which has been successfully applied for simulating mechanical behavior of metal matrix composites. In this work, a rectangular inclusion (layered silicate) is surrounded by PA 6 polymer matrix, which is again embedded in the PA 6/layered silicate nanocomposite. The stiffness of the composite is determined iteratively in a self-consistent manner. For comparison, two analytical composite models (Halpin-Tsai model and Tangdon-Weng model) are implemented to evaluate the stiffness of this nanocomposite via calculations performed within MATLAB. In the modeling volume fraction, aspect ratio, exfoliation and orientation of the nanolayered silicate are taken into account. It is demonstrated that the numerical approach using the self-consistent embedded cell model coincides well with experimental results of the stiffness of the composite. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]