Modelling the electro-mechanical properties of PPy/epoxy conductive composites

Modern trends in materials dedicated for aircraft applications are focused on development of highly multifunctional materials that allow not only to carry mechanical loading, but also to possess several other types of functionality, e.g. be thermal resistant, electrically conductive, etc. The material of such a type, with a possibility of conducting electrical current without loss of mechanical properties is the main topic of presented research results. The work presented here deals with the determination of the overall stochastic mechanical and electrical properties of a blend of polypyrrole (PPy) and epoxy. The material properties are obtained applying appropriate periodic boundary conditions (PBCs) to the representative volume elements (RVEs) of the material nano-structure. A strategy to model numerically the electrical percolation network in the framework of Finite Element Method (FEM) is proposed and discussed. Electrical and mechanical properties of the material are calculated as a function of the filler volume fraction. Finally, the numerical results are compared with experiments found in literature and an overall good agreement is found.