Effect of applied load on wear of microwave sintered alumina-graphene ceramic composite material

The present work is mainly focussed on the preparation of alumina ceramic composite material reinforced with different weight proportions (wt%) of graphene ranging from 0.15 wt% to 0.45 wt% (with an interval of 0.1) and fabrication using microwave sintering method. Wear studies are performed on graphene reinforced alumina ceramic material samples using pin-on-disk apparatus at different loads of 5 N, 10 N, 15 N keeping speed of 0.8 m s −1 and sliding distance of 40 m constant. The obtained wear results are compared with wear performance of pure alumina samples which are prepared in the same condition. Wear tests even at higher load of 15 N revealed that the decrease in the wear rate of the ceramic composite samples reinforced with 0.35 wt% of grapheme is 35.14% and in the ceramic composite samples reinforced with 0.45 wt% of graphene is 34.85% when compared with the wear rate of samples prepared with pure alumina. The effect of different wt%s of graphene on wear properties of prepared ceramic composites is studied through SEM analysis, and observed that the abrasive wear phenomenon is found to be the dominant wear mechanism.