Experimental Investigation on Tribological Characteristics of NaOH Treated Chopped Abaca Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composites

Abstract

For material engineers, greater consumption of fuel by the aviation and automobile sector is a greater challenge. Based on this scenario, exploration towards the generation of new engineering materials which are lighter with superior mechanical properties in the field of aviation and automobile sector is found to be important. Reduce the fuel utilization up to 70% in the above mentioned sectors is the 2025 universe vision. According to substantial reports, eco-friendly products can be refined from natural fiber composites. Tribological characteristics of NaOH treated chopped abaca fiber reinforced epoxy composites were discussed in this paper. Using compression moulding technique, NaOH treated chopped abaca fiber reinforced epoxy composites were fabricated by varying the abaca fiber volume fraction to 10 wt%, 15 wt%, 20 wt%, and 25 wt%. Pin-on-disk wear testing machine is used in this study for the dry sliding wear test at different loads of 10N, 15N and 20N. The wear test sample results were compared with neat epoxy composites. The composites containing abaca fiber shows better tribological characteristics than the neat epoxy composites. The investigation results shows that wear results of the composites can be very much influenced by the speed, sliding distance and applied load. 25wt% of abaca fibre volume fraction composites was found to be the optimum value.