Investigating the mechanical, morphological, and thermal behavior of PA-6/SAN/MWCNT blends: Application of Taguchi experimental design

This work presents the study of morphology, melting and crystallization characteristics, and mechanical properties of the PA-6/SAN blends reinforced with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). The Taguchi method was employed to design the experiments based on the three varying parameters (ie, blend composition, nanofiller content, and sequence of blending) to obtain the optimized mechanical properties of the nanocomposites. In addition, localization of nanotubes was studied in terms of thermodynamic and kinetic prospects. It was observed that, due to the preferential tendency for localization of the carbon nanotubes toward the PA-6 matrix, mixing protocol had an important role in determining the performance of the nanocomposites. Incorporation of an optimum weight percent of the MWCNT provided a good dispersion of the nanotubes and also an appropriate morphology for the blend. According to the analysis based on the Taguchi method, the optimum mixing protocol, blend composition, and MWCNT loading were M2, 80/20, and 0.5 wt%, respectively.