Highly aligned carbon nanotube web for structural health monitoring applications

Herein, we present a novel approach for damage sensing in adhesively bonded joints using a carbon nanotube single layer web (CNT-SLW) which marks a significant departure from the direct mixing approach of CNTs with epoxy adhesives. In this work, very thin highly aligned CNT-SLW (thickness ~ 2.5 µm) with aerial density of 2.0 μg/cm2 were horizontally drawn from vertically aligned CNTs forests and positioned over an adhesive film and placed between two non-conductive composite adherents, followed by the application of heat and pressure to form the joint. These joints were subjected to quasi-static loading to investigate the influences of CNT-SLW orientation on the damage sensing performance . © CCM 2020 - 18th European Conference on Composite Materials. All rights reserved.