Friction and slide wear characteristics of glass-epoxy and glass-epoxy filled with SiCp composites

This paper highlights the friction and wear behaviour of glass-epoxy (G-E) composites with and without silicon carbide particles (SiCp) filler content as a function of sliding distance, keeping the sliding velocity and applied load constant. It is seen that the wear rate increases with increasing sliding distance, but the gradient is not maintained the same all through. An attempt has also been made to correlate the wear loss of the worn surfaces using scanning electron microscopic (SEM) observations. The coefficient of friction is found to be almost same over a wide range of sliding distance employed. Further, the study indicates that the SiCp-G-E composites show lower coefficient of friction and lower slide wear loss compared to G-E composites irrespective of the sliding distance employed. It is found that during the running in wear, the wear of the resin mix as well as very few broken fibers are noticed. The breakage of fibers, the matrix debris formation and interface separation take place at a much later stage (i.e., in the severe wear re-ion). In the steady state region some of the bloken fibers are getting disoriented in the matrix and also agglomerations of the debris are seen. Other interesting SEM features have been noticed and discussed taking into account the addition of SiCp filler content (2.5 and 5.0 wt. %).