Three-body abrasive wear behavior of E-glass fabric reinforced/graphite-filled epoxy composites

The present article summarizes an experimental study on three-body abrasive wear behavior of glass fabric reinforced/graphite particulate-filled epoxy composites. The wear behavior was assessed by rubber wheel abrasion tests (RWAT). The angular silica sand particle sizes in the range 200-250 pm were used as dry and loose abrasives. The tests were carried out for 270, 540, 810, and 1,080 m abrading distances at 22 and 32 N loads. The worn surfaces were examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results showed varied responses under different abrading distance due to the addition of glass fabric/graphite filler into neat epoxy. It was observed that the glass fabric reinforcement to epoxy matrix (G-E) is not beneficial to abrasive wear resistance. Further, inclusion of graphite filler to glass fabric reinforced epoxy composite performed poorly resulting in significant deterioration in wear performance while the neat epoxy showed better wear performance. Selected mechanical properties such as hardness, ultimate tensile strength, and elongation at fracture were analyzed for investigating wear property correlations. The worn surface features were studied using SEM to give insight into the wear mechanisms.