Analysis of Abrasive Wear Behavior of Carbon Fabric Reinforced Epoxy Composite using Taguchi Method

摘要

An experimental investigation was carried out to study the effect of the filler weight fraction, normal load, and sliding distance on the abrasive wear behavior of Carbon/Epoxy composite. In this study, comparative abrasive wear performance of carbon fabric reinforced Epoxy composite filled with varying weight fraction of graphite fillers has been reported. Wear studies were carried out using rubber wheel abrasion test (RWAT) rig with Silica sand particles of size 200 μm used as dry and loose abrasives. Weight loss of the composites during abrasion has been examined as a function of sliding distance and normal load. Investigations showed that abrasive wear of the composites depend on the applied load, as well as on the weight fraction of fillers. A plan of experiments, based on techniques of Taguchi, was performed to acquire data in controlled way. An orthogonal array and the analysis of variance were employed to investigate the influence of process parameters on the wear of these composites. The objective is to establish a correlation between abrasive wear of composites and wear parameters. These correlations were obtained by multiple regressions. The results showed that, the weight loss increases with increasing applied load, sliding distance and weight fraction of graphite filler. Finally, confirmation tests were conducted to verify the experimental results foreseen from the mentioned correlations.