Processing, Characterization and Slurry Abrasion Wear Behaviour of Needle-Punched Nonwoven Fabric Reinforced Polymer Composites

Abstract

Now-a-days, the demand for the needle-punched nonwoven fabrics has been increasing, especially in the high performance composites as reinforcement due to their potential of imparting high z-directional strength, ease of resin absorption, light weight and low cost. The present research work is undertaken to study the physical, mechanical and slurry abrasion wear behaviour of needle-punched nonwoven fabric reinforced epoxy composites with and without particulate fillers. Attempts have been made to explore the possible use of blast furnace slag (BFS) as filler material, which is a major industrial waste in the steel industries. A series of composites are prepared by hand lay-up technique using different BFS filler content (0, 5, 10, 15 wt. %) at constant fiber loading (30 wt. %) and with different area density (100, 200, 300, 400 gsm) of polyester and viscose fabrics. The effect of BFS content and area density of fabrics on the density, micro-hardness, tensile strength, flexural strength, inter-laminar shear strength (ILSS), impact strength of composites are analyzed. The slurry abrasion wear behaviour of composites has been studied by considering different parameters like sliding velocity, normal load, sliding distance, silica sand size, filler content and area density of fabric. The design of experiment approach using Taguchi methodology is employed for the parametric analysis of slurry abrasive wear process. The optimum parametric combination is determined for the minimum wear rate and further validated through confirmation experiments. The comparative study revealed that composites filled with BFS filler shows better mechanical and slurry abrasive wear properties as compared to the composites without filler. The morphological study of abraded surfaces of composites examined by scanning electron microscopy and the possible wear mechanisms are discussed. Finally, the ranking of the composite materials under this study is made by using the two different methods such as AHP-TOPSIS and MOORA based on their physical, mechanical and slurry abrasion wear attributes.