Three-body abrasive wear of short glass fibre polyester composite

Short E-glass fibre-reinforced polyester composites with and without filler have been studied for the low stress abrasive wear behaviour carried out using Rubber Wheel Abrasion Test (RWAT) apparatus. In the present investigation, angular silica sand particles of size ranging between 100–200 and 200–300 μm were used as dry and loose abrasives. The volume loss of the composite during three-body abrasion has been measured as a function of sliding distance and other experimental parameters. It was found that the abrasive wear of the composite shows dependence on all the test parameters like applied load, sliding speed and abrasive particle size. The size of the abrasive particle and applied load tends to increase abrasive wear volume of the composites, whereas wear rate tends to decrease with increasing sliding velocity at constant applied load and particles of size ranging 200–300 μm. Secondly, higher weight fraction of glass fibres in the composite improves the abrasive wear resistance because high energy is required to facilitate failure in glass fibres. The concept of energy transfer has been applied to explain the mechanism of wear in the composites. Scanning electron microscopy was used to observe the worn surfaces and to understand the mechanism involved in the removal of the material. The observed microphotographs of worn surfaces were found to be in correlation with the proposed mechanism of material removal in glass fibre composites.