Sliding Wear Behavior of Glass Fibre Reinforced Filled Epoxy Resin Composite

Abstract

Glass fiber reinforced polymer composites find widespread applications these days in hostile environment due to their several advantages like high wear resistance, strength-to-weight ratio and low cost. The performance of the composites can further be improved by adding particulate fillers to them. To this end, this work successfully uses TiO2 as a filler material in polymer. The present work includes the processing, characterization and study of the sliding wear behaviour of a series of such filled short glass-epoxy composites. It further outlines a methodology based on Taguchi’s experimental design approach to make a parametric analysis of sliding wear behaviour. The systematic experimentation leads to determination of significant process parameters and material variables that predominantly influence the wear rate.