Analysis of Nanocarbon Effect on Polymer Composite Tribological Properties

Present work aims to analyze the effect of including carbon-based nano materials in the thermosetting polymer based composite in terms of their tribological properties based on critical assessment of several literature data in this field of research. In particular, nanocarbon materials such as carbon nano tubes (CNT), graphene oxides (GO), and graphene are effectively being incorporated in to various polymers as a reinforcement agent to develop polymer nanocomposite based brake pad material. Phenolic and epoxy resins are found to be the most popular thermosetting polymers in practice and research for brake pad material development. Accordingly, the role of nanocarbon which is responsible for the stable coefficient of friction and reduced wear rate due to its inclusion in to phenolic and epoxy resins-based polymer composite have been studied in the present work. As per the present meta-analysis of tribological properties for nanocarbon based phenolic and epoxy resins polymer composite, the analyses showed that an average of around 65% specific wear rate reduction using 5 wt% graphene inclusions in the phenolic based polymer composite as compared to the 5 wt% graphitebased phenolic polymer composite. While in other case a wear rate reduction of 70%, 85%, and 94% were also achieved using 1.5 wt% CNT, 5.3 wt% graphene, and amino treated 0.2 wt% GO respectively in epoxy resin-based polymer composite as compared to pure epoxy resin in all the cases. Moreover, nanocarbon potential in reduction of wear rate for both phenolic and epoxy resin based nanocomposites are found practically evident while maintaining the stable coefficient of friction. Finally the nanocarbon found to be highly potential in affecting the tribological properties with limited amount addition in both phenolic and epoxy polymer composites, while at the same time it is also found that the nanocarbon effect may not pop up in same way when many ingredients added in the phenolic and epoxy polymer composites. © 2024 School of Science, DUTH. All Rights Reserved.