Mechanical characterizations and development of erosive wear model for Al2O3-filled short glass fiber-reinforced polymer composites

Abstract

In the present work, short glass fiber-reinforced polyester-based hybrid composites are fabricated by the incorporation of Al2O3 particulates with three different weight percentages (0 wt.%, 10 wt.% and 20 wt.%) to evaluate their physical, mechanical, and thermo-mechanical behavior. A theoretical model has been developed for erosive wear conditions and results are compared with the experimental outcomes in order to validate the model. The mechanical properties are simulated using an explicit FE code software ANSYS. In this work, erosion test is conducted by using popular evolutionary Taguchi’s (L27) orthogonal array design to optimize the experimental results. It is observed from the analysis that the peak erosion rate occurs at 75° impingement angle for Al2O3-filled composites, whereas for unfilled composites, it occurs at 60° impingement angle. The thermo-mechanical characteristics such as storage modulus (E′), loss modulus (E″), and damping properties (Tan δ) are investigated in the temperature range of 25–200 ℃. It is observed that the slope corresponding to the temperature-dependent decay of the storage modulus for 10 wt.% and 20 wt.%, Al2O3-filled composite is much higher as compared to 0 wt.% Al2O3-filled composite in the temperature range of 25–75 ℃. However, the storage modulus for 10 wt.% and 20 wt.% Al2O3-filled composites remain almost same in the range of 25–60 ℃. Finally, the surface morphology of the eroded composites is examined by using scanning electron microscope and the possible wear mechanisms are discussed.