Studies on Curing Kinetics and Tensile Properties of Silica-Filled Phenolic Amine/Epoxy Resin Nanocomposite

In this study, the curing kinetics of the phenolic amine/epoxy resin system were investigated by nonisothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The model-free isoconversional method of Ozawa–Flynn–Wall reveals a dependence of E(α) (activation energy) on conversion (α), which interprets the autocatalytic curing reaction mechanism of the phenolic amine/epoxy resin system. Studies on the effects of nano-SiO(2) particles on the tensile properties and tensile fracture face morphology of nanocomposites show that the uniform dispersion of SiO(2) nanoparticles plays an important role in promoting the tensile performance of nanocomposites. Additionally, increases of 184.1% and 217.2% were achieved by adding 1.5% weight parts of nano-SiO(2) in composites for the tensile strength and tensile modulus, respectively.