Influence of fillers on abrasive wear of short glass fibre reinforced polyamide composites

Various composites of polyamide 6 filled with short glass fibre, polytetrafluoroethylene and metal powders viz. copper and bronze were formulated in the laboratory and characterised for their various mechanical properties such as tensile strength, tensile elongation, flexural strength, hardness and impact strength. Compositional analysis was done with gravimetry, solvent extraction and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) techniques followed by tribo-performance evaluation in abrasive wear mode by abrading a sample against silicon carbide (SiC) abrasive paper in a single pass condition under various loads. It was observed that the fibre reinforcement deteriorated the abrasive wear resistance of virgin polymer. Combination of fibre and particulate filler was more detrimental in this respect. Efforts were made to correlate the wear performance with the appropriate mechanical properties. Under selected loading condition, wear as a function of product of hardness, elongation to break (e) and ultimate tensile strength (S) showed better correlation than Ranter-Lancaster plot. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to analyse the worn surfaces of the samples. (C) 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.