Wear Performance of Fly Ash-enhanced Aramid Fibre Reinforced Polymer Matrix Composites

The abrasive wear performance of fly ash filled aramid fibre reinforced phenolic based composites has been investigated on a rubber wheel abrasive wear tester (RWAT). The design of the experiment approach which uses Taguchi’s orthogonal arrays is adopted to objectively evaluate and prioritize five influencing factors that are taken as experimental variables. A predictive mathematical model for damage assessment in wear rate is developed and validated by a well designed set of experiments. The study reveals that sliding distance, external abrading particle size and fly ash content show greater influence on the specific wear rate of the composites. An investigation on worn surface morphology with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) has been carried out to understand the plausible wear mechanisms. The study thus carried out has revealed the decisive role of quartz particles and photovoltaic (PV) conditions in terms of their influence not only on the alterations of topographical attributes, but also surface ploughing, micro-pitting and sub-surface damage as the various modes of wear of these composites.