Finite Element Modelling of Wear Behaviors of Composite Laminated Structure

Abstract

Three different laminated composites are used in this study: carbon fiber, woven glass fiber, and glass-fiber-reinforced epoxy. The composite laminate structures were fabricated using the hand lay-up technique at room temperature. The laminates were reinforced with epoxy resin, carbon fibers (CFRP), woven glass fibers (GFRP-W), and random-orientation glass fibers (GFRP-R) to obtain laminates with eight layers. The wear test was performed using a pin-on-disc tribometer with five different loads of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 N at room temperature and a constant speed of 3 m/s. In addition, three different surfaces were lubricated: dry, with grease, and with oil. The effect of lubrication on the weight loss of the laminates was measured. The linear elastic finite element model FEM was derived to simulate the pin on the disc and the failure mode in shear mode for the case of dry lubrication. In addition, the FEM allows the friction force to be measured to determine the friction coefficient numerically. For validation, a simple analytical model based on the shear stress induced by the laminates at the interfaces was extracted to measure the friction coefficients. Tensile strength is a characteristic property that is very important for the purpose of material description from FEM and the analytical model. Therefore, it was determined experimentally with a simple tensile test. The results show that the wear rate is better with GFRP-R composites. Moreover, the wear rate with grease is lower than with oil or dry. The FEM showed that the coefficient of friction decreases with normal force to a minimum value of 0.02 for the case of 50 N normal force and for GFRP-R, while the maximum value of the coefficient of friction was 0.55 for CFRP at 10 N normal load and the FEM results were in good agreement with the analytically determined data.