Prediction of Hyperelastic Material Properties of Nafion117 and Nafion/ZrO2 Nano-Composite Membrane

Abstract

This paper presents constitutive laws suitable for the prediction of mechanical behaviour of nano-composite membrane compared with the commercial membrane Nafion®117. The uniaxial tensile data of commercial Nafion®117 and Nafion®/ Zr-150 nano-composite membrane utilised for fitting hyperelastic models was determined experimentally. Several material models on mechanical behaviour of nano-composite and commercial Nafion® 117 membrane material was fitted to determined accuracy. In order to observe yield and fracture behaviour, the com-mercial Nafion®117 and Nafion®/ Zr-150 nano-composite membranes were loaded in uniaxial direction at a constant strain rate. To obtain the optimal material constants form six different material models considered in this study, the OriginLab® version 9 was used and the Leven-berg-Marquardt (M) optimization logarithm. Hyperplastic material models including Mooney-Rivlin, Yeoh, Ogden, Humphrey, Martins and Veronda-Westmann were selected to use in an inverse method to fit the experimental uniaxial data of nano-composite material. The hyper-plastic material parameters could then be used to simulate material behaviour of nano mem-brane using finite element analysis (FEA) technique. The procedure discussed in this paper could be used to accurately determine the constitutive parameters of various constitutive models of Polymer Nafion presented.