Impact of filler on solid particle erosion wear in glass fibre composites: A comprehensive review

GFRP composite has come up as a promising candidate due to its lightweight and high strength-to-weight ratio. However, GFRP suffers from inherent disadvantages with respect to wear resistance and overall durability, which necessitates the incorporation of fillers that could provide significant improvement in such properties. In the present review paper, the solid particle erosion wear (SPE) of glass fibre composite with and without filler addition has been presented and exploring how fillers impact the wear resistance. Among the important process parameters supposed to influence solid particle erosion wear in GFRP composites are impact velocity, impact angle, particle size, erodent hardness and environmental conditions. These parameters shall be understood for optimisation in providing wear resistance to GFRP composites in erosive situations like slurry carrying pipeline, wind blade, etc. Normally, the erosion rate increases with increasing impact velocities and larger sizes of the particles responsible for increased kinetic energy and momentum transfer. Angular erodent produces more severe wear than spherical ones. Impact angle fixes the wear mechanism and accordingly, the ductile behaviour of these composites is at their peak at oblique angles and brittle at normal angles. A general idea of the problem of SPE is established in relation to the process parameters on solid particle erosion wear of GFRP composites. GFRP composites are prepared by using several fillers such as fly ash, Al2O3, cenosphere, silica fume and zinc oxide, wheat starch, rice husk, iron mud, waste marble dust and barium sulphate. Among all these composites, GFRP filed with Al2O3 composites has shown the highest resistance against erosion wear. A detailed experimental study of SPE of the GFRP composites and numerical analysis of solid particle erosion wear of glass fibre reinforced composites are discussed and their finding is shown here.