Novel behaviour of friction and wear of epoxy composites reinforced by carbon nanotubes

This paper investigates the wear properties of a carbon nanotube reinforced epoxy composite. The study shows that the surface coverage area of CNTs, Rc/m, plays a significant role in the wearability of the composites. With Rc/m > 25%, the wear rate can be reduced by a factor of 5.5. With the aid of the transmission electron microscopy, the study concluded that the improvement of the wear resistance of a high Rc/m composite was due to the CNTs exposed to the sliding interface which protected the epoxy matrix effectively. It was also shown that the contact sliding in a wear test can deform a CNT significantly and cause its fragmentation.