Abstracto

Erosion wear behavior of TiO2 filled glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites

Sandhyarani Biswas, Subhrajit Ray, Alok Satapathy, Amar Patnaik

This paper describes the development and characterization of a new set of glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites filled with TiO2 particulate/filler. The newly developed composites are characterized with respect to their mechanical and erosion wear characteristics. Experiments are carried out to study the effect of fiber content, impact velocity, impingement angle, standoff distance and erodent size on the solid particle erosion behaviour of these composites. The significant control factors and their interactions predominantly influencing the wear rate are identified by using Taguchi experimental design. The study reveals that the fiber content, impact velocity, impingement angle and erodent size have substantial influence in determining the rate ofmaterial loss fromthe composite surface due to erosion. Then, Arti?cial neural network (ANN) technique has been use to predict the erosion rate based on the experimentally measured database of composites. Also the morphology of eroded surfaces is examined by using scanning electronmicroscopy (SEM) and possible erosionmechanisms are discussed.