Abrasive wear performance of carbon fabric reinforced polyetherimide composites: Influence of content and orientation of fabric

Dry abrasive wear performance of five plain weave carbon fabric (CF) reinforced Polyetherimide (PEI) composites, developed with increasing CF contents (in the step of 10 vol%) is reported in this paper. It was observed that composite reinforced with 65 vol% CF (IP₆₅) exhibited the best tensile and shear strength and closely followed the leader (IP₇₅) in flexural strength. IP₆₅ when abraded against silicon carbide paper showed highest wear resistance (W_R) and lowest friction coefficient (μ) among all composites. The composites IP₈₅ and IP₄₀ containing highest and lowest amount of CF respectively showed least enhancement in strength properties and poorest wear performance. Parallel studies on the influence of fabric orientation with respect to the sliding plane and direction, on W_R showed that when CF was oriented parallel to the sliding plane, it had poorest wear resistance. The performance improved for the composites when fabric was oriented normal to the plane. The parallel or anti-parallel orientation of warp or weft fibers with respect to sliding direction showed marginal changes in friction and wear performance. Wear mechanisms were suggested and strongly supported by worn surface analysis using SEM.Efforts were also done to investigate the wear-property correlation. It was observed that the W_R was directly proportional to the product of interlaminar shear strength (I_s) and elastic modulus (E). Fairly good linearity was shown for specific wear rate (K₀) as a function of factor (μP/I_sE) where μ is coefficient of friction and P is the normal pressure (N/mm²).