Evaluation of Mechanical and Erosive wear Characteristics of TiO2 and ZnO Filled Bi-Directional E-glass Fiber Based Vinyl Ester Composites

This article presents the evaluation of mechanical and erosive wear characteristics of bi-directional E-glass fiber based vinyl ester composites filled with TiO2 (titanium oxide) and ZnO (zinc oxide) of 10 wt.% and 20 wt.% respectively. The mechanical characterization of these composites is performed. The erosion rates of these composites have been evaluated at different impingement angles (30 (ay), 60 (ay) and 90 (ay)). The particles used for the erosion measurements were silica sand with the diameters of 300, 425 and 600 mu m and impact velocities of 30, 50 and 70 m/s were used. A plan of experiments, based on the Taguchi design, was performed to acquire data in a controlled way. An orthogonal array L-27 (3 (13)) and Analysis of variance (ANOVA) have been applied to investigate the influence of process parameters on the erosive wear behaviour of these composites. The tensile strength of composite specimens is found to decrease with filler loading while hardness, flexural strength, inter-laminar shear strength (ILSS) and impact strength increase. TiO2 filled composites were observed to perform better than ZnO filled composites under erosive wear situations. The dominant wear mechanism is studied on the basis of micrographs of the worn-out surface of composite materials. Performance optimization of composites is done by using the VIKOR method.