Predicting the electrical conductivity of short carbon fiber/graphene nanoplatelet/polymer composites

The current work examines the effect of graphene nanoplatelet (GNP) additives upon the electrical conductivity of short carbon fiber (SCF)-reinforced polymer multifunctional composites. GNPs and SCFs are randomly dispersed into the representative volume element of the composite. A multi-step physics-based approach is developed to determine the effective electrical conductivity of SCF/GNP/polymer composites. Outcomes of the current work are compared with the available experimental data and other numerical results to verify its ac-curacy. Changes in the volume fraction and geometry of multi-scale reinforcements, interphase characteristics, barrier height, nanofiller tunneling distance and fiber material property are considered to reflect the influence of microstructures on the electrical conducing behavior of SCF/GNP/polymer multifunctional composites. It is found that the electrical conductivity of the multifunctional composite enhances by the increase of volume fraction and aspect ratio of GNP as well as the reduction of its thickness. Moreover, the multifunctional com-posite shows a higher electrical conductivity with the increase of fiber aspect ratio. The electrical conductivity of the SCF/GNP-reinforced composite depends on the interphase such that its value increases by the increase of interphase thickness. The developed method can be adopted to provide useful guidelines for the design and optimization of multifunctional composites filled by hybrid reinforcements.