Abrasive wear and dynamic-mechanical behavior of marble dust filled bagasse fiber reinforced hybrid polymer composites

The present study investigated the influence of waste materials on physico-mechanical, dynamic mechanical, and abrasive wear behavior of polymer composites. The composites were manufactured by varying the waste bagasse fiber (2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10 wt%) in fixed marble dust (15 wt%) filled epoxy resin. The void content of the composite found to decrease, whereas density, impact energy, and flexural strength were found to increase with the increase of waste bagasse fiber loading. The hardness and tensile strength were first increased, and after attaining highest values for 7.5 wt% fiber content, both decreased with another fiber loading. Damping properties such as storage modulus, loss modulus, and damping factor were evaluated utilizing dynamic mechanical analyzer. Results showed that the composites with 10 wt% waste bagasse fiber loading exhibited highest viscoelastic properties. Moreover, the dry sand abrasive wear behavior of fabricated composites was designed to study the impact of fiber loading, sliding distance, and load using the Taguchi method. The analysis reveals that the sliding distance contributes the most toward abrasive wear of the composites, with a contribution of 58.70%. 7.5 wt% waste bagasse fiber, 400 m sliding distance, and 5 N load resulted in a most wear-resistant combination. Finally, the abraded composite surfaces were examined using scanning electron microscopy to study the possible wear mechanisms.