Thermo-Mechanical Properties and Abrasive Wear Behavior of Silicon Carbide Filled Woven Glass Fiber Composites

A study was done to determine the effect of physical, mechanical, thermal and three body abrasive wear response of Silicon Carbide (SiC) filled Glass Fiber Reinforced Epoxy (GFRE) composites. The main purpose was to study the influence of different weight percentages (wt.%) of SiC filler in addition to that of glass fiber. A three body abrasive wear analysis was conducted by varying different factors such as fiber/filler reinforcement, abrasive particle size, normal load, sliding distance and sliding velocity. An attempt was made to find out the dominant factor and the effect of each factor on specific wear rate analysis. Physical and mechanical properties, i.e. density, hardness, tensile strength, flexural strength, inter laminar shear strength and impact strength, were determined for each weight percent of filler reinforcement to determine the behavior of mechanical properties with varying SiC filler loading. Thermo - mechanical properties of the material, i.e. storage modulus, loss modulus and tan delta with temperature were measured using a Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer (DMA). The result shows the increasing / decreasing trend and critical points of each analysis. The trend and major factors responsible for reducing the specific wear rate were determined. Mechanical properties, i.e. hardness and impact strength, increase with the increase in SiC content, whereas tensile strength, flexural strength and inter laminar shear strength decrease. Worn surfaces were studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to give an insight into the wear mechanisms.