M. M Shokrieh - Professor
B Memar Maher - MSc Student
A Fereidoon - Professor

In this manuscript, mechanical and tribological behaviors of SiO2/epoxy, TiO2/epoxy nanocomposites are investigated under scratch and nano indentation loading by using Hysitron nano indentation testing instrument. For each nanocomposites 5 wt. % of nanoparticles were added to the epoxy and experimental results showed that adding nanoparticles to resin increases its hardness and elastic modulus. It is also indicated that addition of particles causes in a decrease of coefficient of friction and scratch depth of the specimens. Furthermore, the specimens containing the nano particles showed less surface deformation in comparison with the neat epoxy resin under the same specified external point loading. Specifically, the SiO2/epoxy specimens showed least deformation, followed by TiO2/epoxy Nano composites. The result of scratch and indentation tests and AFM images showed that the penetration depth decreases by adding nanoparticle. For instance the indentation test of SiO2/Epoxy shows 42% decrease in the penetration depth compared with the neat epoxy. Also, the scratch test of SiO2/Epoxy shows 75% decrease in comparison with the neat epoxy. The results showed that TiO2/epoxy nano composites had a tendency to decrease the coefficient of friction.

SiO2, TiO2, nanoparticles, Epoxy, nanoindentation, Scratch, AFM