Waste marble dust‐filled glass fiber‐reinforced polymer composite Part I: Physical, thermomechanical, and erosive wear properties

This research article presents the fabrication and investigation of physical, thermomechanical, and erosive wear properties of glass fiber‐reinforced epoxy composites with and without waste marble dust. The composites were fabricated by vacuum‐assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) technique under controlled operating condition. The filler material (marble dust) was varied in the range of 0–30 wt% in the composite at an interval of 10 wt% to find out the physical (density, void content, hardness and XRD), thermomechanical (storage modulus, loss modulus, damping factor, and thermal conductivity), and erosive wear rate, respectively. This study clearly demonstrated that with the increased filler content, the density, void content, and hardness of the composites were shown promising results along with the crystallinity of the composites. The storage modulus and loss modulus of the unfilled and particulate‐filled composites were shown positive effect up to a temperature range of 60°C and then observed decreased trend irrespective of change in filler content with the increased temperature. However, as far as erosion rate was concerned, the particulate‐filled composites were shown better wear resistance with the change in impact velocity as well as impingement angle in steady‐state operating condition as compared with unfilled composite. At the end, the obtained experimental results were compared with already reported theoretical model in order to validate the results along with the microstructural analysis of composites were also studied to understand the wear mechanism. POLYM. COMPOS., 40:4113–4124, 2019. © 2019 Society of Plastics Engineers