Mechanical Behavior of Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polyphenylene Sulfide with Carbon Nanofiber Additions

This study systematically investigates the impact of Carbon Nanofiber (CNF) incorporation on the mechanical behavior of Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polyphenylene Sulfide (GF/PPS) composites. Tensile, flexural, and impact tests were conducted on composite samples with CNF loadings ranging from 0.2 wt% to 1.0 wt%, following ASTM standards to quantify the resulting changes in mechanical properties. According to tensile tests, adding 0.8 wt% CNF greatly increased stiffness, increasing tensile modulus by 11.1% and tensile strength by 4.6%. With the same CNF loading, flexural testing also showed significant gains, with a 27.2% increase in flexural modulus and a 19.5% increase in flexural strength. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) sheds light on the mechanisms of failure. Furthermore, the tensile and flexural properties of GF/PPS composites are successfully improved by the selective addition of CNFs, especially at optimal concentrations, making these hybrid materials excellent choices for demanding structural engineering applications. However, the addition of CNF to GF/PPS reduced impact strength while increasing stiffness and modulus. This could have occurred because the material’s ductility and toughness were diminished by the increased stiffness, which limited its capacity to absorb impact energy through deformation and might have caused fracture initiation and propagation rather than energy dissipation.