Issue 34, 2016

Micro-mechanical modelling of cellulose aerogels from molten salt hydrates

Abstract

In this paper, a generalised micro-mechanical model capable of capturing the mechanical behaviour of polysaccharidic aerogels, in particular cellulose aerogels, is proposed. To this end, first the mechanical structure and properties of these highly nanoporous cellulose aerogels prepared from aqueous salt hydrate melts (calcium thiocyanate, Ca(SCN)2·6H2O and zinc chloride, ZnCl2·4H2O) are studied. The cellulose content within these aerogels is found to have a direct relation to the microstructural quantities such as the fibril length and diameter. This, along with porosity, appears to influence the resulting mechanical properties. Furthermore, experimental characterisation of cellulose aerogels was done using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), pore-size data analysis, and compression tests. Cellulose aerogels are of a characteristic cellular microstructures and accordingly a network formed by square shaped cells is considered in the micro-mechanical model proposed in this paper. This model is based on the non-linear bending and collapse of such cells of varying pore sizes. The extended Euler–Bernoulli beam theory for large deflections is used to describe the bending in the cell walls. The proposed model is physically motivated and demonstrates a good agreement with our experimental data of both ZnCl2 and Ca(SCN)2 based cellulose aerogels with different cellulose contents.

Graphical abstract: Micro-mechanical modelling of cellulose aerogels from molten salt hydrates

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
24 Jun 2016
Accepted
25 Jul 2016
First published
25 Jul 2016

Soft Matter, 2016,12, 7079-7088

Micro-mechanical modelling of cellulose aerogels from molten salt hydrates

A. Rege, M. Schestakow, I. Karadagli, L. Ratke and M. Itskov, Soft Matter, 2016, 12, 7079 DOI: 10.1039/C6SM01460G

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