Effects of waste glass dust incorporation on the tribological performance of flax-epoxy hybrid composites

Waste glass dust, an industrial waste, generated in the glass-cutting industries, is considered carcinogenic and poses health risks as it is high in silica content. This research essentially explores the alternative use of these waste glass dust as functional fillers in fabricating wear-resistant hybrid polymer composites. It includes fabrication of the hybrid epoxy composites in hand lay-up route with varying weight fractions (0-0.2) of the waste glass dust along with the flax fiber (30 wt. %) and their dry sliding wear behavior is observed. Test sample preparation follows ASTM-G99-05 standard and experiments are conducted considering Taguchi's L25 design. Significant improvement in the wear resistance of the hybrid composites is obtained after incorporating the waste glass dust and flax fibers. Filler content is found to be the most effective factor in affecting the wear rate followed by the sliding velocity during the Taguchi analysis with respective contributions of 54.51% and 38.59% as obtained from the ANOVA analysis of the wear results. Normal load and sliding distance are found to affect marginally the wear rates of the composites. A predictive model is proposed to find the specific wear rate (SWR) using the test results through the regression analysis. The minimum wear rate is obtained for 20 wt. % of filler, 1000 m of sliding distance, 50 cm/sec of sliding velocity, and 10 N of load. The mechanisms predominantly responsible for the wear loss have also been studied using a scanning electron microscope.