idal.
The mean diameter of the SiO2 nanoparticles is 20 nm. Due to the
in-situ synthesis process, the SiO2 nanoparticles were dispersed in
EP resin without obvious agglomeration, as evidenced by TEM
analyses [24].
The micro-sized fillers, i.e. SCF, SGF, graphite and PTFE, were
dispersed into the EP resin by using a vacuum dissolver. For preparing
hybrid nanocomposites, the silica masterbatch was firstly
diluted with required amount of EP resin and then micro-sized
fillers were added successively in the resin using the dissolver.
After being blended with the curing agent, the mixtures were
cured at 70 °C for 8 h followed by 8 h at 120 °C. The details
regarding material preparation is available in [25]. The abbreviated
form and the specific compositions of various EP composites were
listed in Table 1. These specific compositions were chosen because
they were proven in previous works [10,25] to exert an important
role on the tribological performance of EP under both dry sliding
and diesel lubricated conditions.