A study on the friction and wear behavior of PTFE filled with alumina nanoparticles

A solid lubricant composite material was made by compression molding PTFE and 40 nm alumina particles. Prior to compression molding the constituent powders were blended using a jet milling apparatus. Composites from 0 to 20 wt.% were prepared. These composites were tested against a polished stainless steel counterface on a reciprocating tribometer. The experimental conditions were a contact pressure of 6.4 MPa, a stroke length of 50 mm, and a sliding speed of 50 mm/s. The friction coefficient of the composite increased over unfilled samples from roughly mu = 0.15 to mu = 0.2. At filler concentrations of 20 wt.%, the wear resistance improved 600 x. The wear resistance of this composite increased monotonically with increasing filler concentration and no optimum filler fraction was found. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved.