Mechanical and tribological performances of ceramic microsphere reinforced polyamide 6 composites

The main motivation of this work is to use ceramic microspheres (CMs) as a potential filler in polyamide 6 (PA6) to enhance its mechanical and tribological performances. Polyamide 6 composites bearing CMs in different weight ratios (10%-40%) are processed by melt blending and characterized primarily by tensile and bending test, dynamical mechanical analysis, and ball-on-disc wear test. This work clearly shows that the addition of CMs gives rise to superior mechanical and wear resistance contribution to PA6. The tensile strength, tensile modulus, flexural strength, and flexural modulus of the composites are enhanced up to 11%, 25%, 37%, and 80%, respectively, over those of the pristine polymer. The wear resistance of 40 wt% CMs containing composite is 60% higher than that of pure PA6. Consequently, it has been found that CMs can be a suitable alternative especially in applications where mechanical strength is desired due to its advantages of high rigidity and sliding wear resistance.