Physical, mechanical and abrasive wear behaviour of jute fiber reinforced polymer composites

Abstract

Now-a-days, abrasive wear of engineering and agricultural machine components caused by the abrasive particles is a major industrial problem. Therefore, a full understanding of the effects of all system variables on the abrasive wear rates is necessary in order to undertake appropriate steps in the design of the machinery and the choice of materials to reduce/control wear. The need for the use of newer materials to combat wear situations has resulted in the emergence of polymer based system. Polymers and their composites form a very important class of tribo engineering
materials and are invariably used in mechanical components where wear performance in non-lubricated condition is a key parameter for the material. The advantages of these materials are light weight, excellent strength to weight
ratios, resistance to corrosion, non-toxicity, easy to fabricate, design flexibility, self-lubricating properties, better coefficient of friction, and wear resistance. The
present research work is undertaken to study the physical, mechanical and three body abrasive wear behaviour of jute fiber reinforced polymer composites. Three different forms of jute fiber (short jute fiber, bidirectional jute fiber and needle punched nonwoven jute fiber) are considered for the present research work. Attempts have been made to explore the possible use of needle punched nonwoven jute fibers as reinforcement for polymer composites. The design of experiments approach using Taguchi methodology is employed for the parametric analysis of abrasive wear process. The study reveals that abrasive wear performance of needle punched nonwoven jute based composites is better than that of the short and bidirectional jute fiber reinforced composites. The morphology of abraded surfaces is examined by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and possible wear mechanisms are discussed. Finally, the ranking of the composite materials under study is done by using AHP-TOPSIS method based on their physical, mechanical and abrasive wear attributes.