Original article Elastic properties of graphene- reinforced aluminum nanocomposite: Effects of temperature, stacked, and perforated graphene Ashish Kumar Srivastava and Vimal Kumar Pathak Abstract In this article, the elastic and shear moduli of the graphene sheet-reinforced aluminum nanocomposite have been investigated by molecular dynamics simulations. Different models have been simulated to study the effect of multilayer graphene sheet, perforation of GS, and temperature on the elastic and shear moduli of resulting nanocomposite. The simulation results show that the elastic and shear moduli of graphene sheet-reinforced aluminum are sensitive to the temperature changes, multilayer, and perforated graphene sheets. The temperature and perforation of graphene sheets exert adverse effects on the elastic and shear moduli of graphene sheet-reinforced aluminum nanocomposites. However, the multilayer graphene sheet leads to favorable effects on the stiffness properties of the nanocomposite. It is also observed that there is only a marginal effect of the chirality of graphene sheet on the out-of-plane shear moduli of the nanocomposite. Keywords Graphene, nanocomposite, molecular dynamics, representative volume element, elastic properties Date received: 8 February 2020; accepted: 11 May 2020 Introduction Honeycomb crystal lattice having a plate-like struc- ture of sp 2 -hybridized carbon atoms, graphene sheet (GS) owns the extraordinary mechanical and electri- cal properties. 1 GSs have been theoretically studied for more than 70 years. 2,3 Even though GSs were already known as an integral part of three- dimensional (3D) materials, but it was assumed that GSs do not survive in the free state and presupposed to be unstable concerning the generation of curved structures of sp 2 -hybridized carbon atoms like fuller- enes and nanotubes. 4 Novoselov et al. 5 produced the naturally-occurring GSs experimentally in 2004 and opened a new window of nanoscience. Stiffness and strength of GSs are observed almost similar to that of widely studied 1D structure of sp 2 -hybridized carbon atoms, carbon nanotube (CNT). 6 But the higher sur- face area of GSs in contact with matrix material as compared to CNTs and its lower production cost than CNTs makes GSs a preferred reinforcing agent over CNTs. 7 It is a challenging task to characterize the GS- nanocomposites either analytically or experimentally, because of the nanoscale dimension of the nanofiller. Therefore, computational simulations, especially molecular simulations play a pivotal role in the char- acterization of nanocomposites materials. 8–10 The plate-like structure of GSs has improved mechanical interlocking with matrix material because of the enlarged interfacial area between GS and matrix, which subsequently results in improved stiffness and strength of the nanocomposite materials than CNT nanocomposites. 11–13 Sharma et al. 14 have made a com- parative molecular dynamics (MD)-based study between CNT and GS-reinforced copper nanocompo- site in terms of elastic properties. It was reported in the study that, for an 8% volume fraction of rein- forcement, the elastic modulus of CNT nanocompo- site is enhanced by 13%, whereas for the same volume Mechanical Engineering Department, Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur, India Corresponding author: Ashish Kumar Srivastava, Mechanical Engineering Department, Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: ashishkumar.srivastava@jaipur.manipal.edu Proc IMechE Part L: J Materials: Design and Applications 2020, Vol. 234(9) 1218–1227 ! The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1464420720930739 journals.sagepub.com/home/pil