Mechanical properties modification of a thin film phenolic resin filled with nano silica particles

• Elastic modulus and hardness of the samples was increased by adding nano SiO2.
• Depth penetration was reduced by increasing the nanoparticles percentage.
• Nanoparticles have a few effect on the wear properties of the phenolic resin.

The current manuscript experimentally investigates the mechanical and wears properties of three different phenolic polymer nanocomposites. Samples are made of 1, 2 and 3 wt.% of well-dispersed silica nanoparticles in a phenolic resin. Firstly, it was found that for the phenolic polymer, the Young’s modulus steadily increased as the weight percent of silica nanoparticles was increased except for 3 wt.% nanoparticle filled samples. For the phenolic polymer with 1 and 2 wt.% nano silica, Young’s modulus was increased 7% and 12.5%, respectively in comparison with the neat phenolic resin. However, for samples with 3% nanosilica this value showed a reduction about 13.5% and 2.7% in comparison to 2% nanoparticle filled samples and pure samples, respectively. Secondly, the presence of 2 wt.% nano silica particles increased the hardness of the phenolic polymer by 27.3% compared with the pure phenolic resin. Also, it was shown by the results of scratch tests that nano silica has almost no effect on the coefficient of the friction and wear rates.