Experimental investigation of the wear behaviour of composites in dry sliding

In this study, the wear behavior of the knitted fabric shaped biaxial glass fiber (0/90 and -45/45), triaxial glass fiber (-45/90/45), quadriaxial glass fiber (0/45/90/-45), biaxial carbon fiber (-45/45) and biaxial hybrid fiber (-45/45) composing of glass and carbon fibers and the composites with reinforced epoxy resin matrix materials were investigated experimentally. In the production of composite materials, Vacuum Assisted Resin Infusion Method (VARIM) was used. The composite material production was carried out at 80 centigrade degree during 5-hour curing process after stowing the pre-cut and folded fibers over each other and impregnating the resin inside fibers in vacuumed environment. Vacuum Assisted Resin Infusion Method has advantageous for production of the composite material due to the applied vacuum operation with respect to developing mechanical properties of the composite structural elements. The wear tests of the produced composite materials were conducted on the multi-purposes friction and TE53 wear test unit. The applied wear test method was the block on roller method. ASTM 137-97 (2009) standard was taken as reference for selection of the test parameters. AISI 52100, 65 HRC hardened bearing steel was used as abrasive disc and four quantities of abrasive disc having two different surface roughness values (Ra=0,16 micron, Ra=0,32 micron) were produced as total. Eight different wear tests were conducted under different parameters for each test sample and average test results were used after repeating these tests for three times for the each test level. SEM analysis has been also conducted to investigate the phenomenon of wear as a function of applied load, sliding distance, the surface roughness of abrasive disc and sliding velocity. Keywords: Polymer matrix composite, dry sliding, wear, fiber reinforcement, epoxy resin, block on roller