Waste Fly Ash Powder Filled Glass Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composite: Physical, Mechancial, Thermo-mechanical, and Three-body Abrasive Wear Analysis

In the present research work, waste fly ash powder-filled chopped glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites are fabricated. Conventional open mold casting technique is used for fabrication of composite samples. The fly ash powder is incorporated from 0 to 15 wt.% in the composite at an interval of 5 wt.% to analyze the physical (experimental and theoretical densities, void fraction and hardness), mechanical (tensile strength, tensile modulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus, impact strength), thermo-mechanical (dynamic mechanical analysis, DMA), and three-body abrasive wear rate, respectively. From this study, it is clearly seen that density, void fraction, and hardness of the composites improved with fly ash content. The strength and modulus of the composites increased with filler content up to 10 wt.%. For the analysis of the homogeneity of composites, the storage modulus, loss modulus, and the cole-cole plot are drawn from dynamic mechanical analysis. Finally, a three-body abrasive wear test is conducted for composite samples, in a steady-state abrasive wear condition up to 10 wt.% fly ash filled composites shown better wear resistance with the variation in sliding distance and normal load. The Taguchi’s design of experiment method is used for designing of experimental runs having input controlling variables like sliding distance, normal load, filler content, and abrasive size.