Abstracto

Sliding wear analysis of natural fiber reinforced polymer composite

Amar Patnaik, Alok Satapathy, Sandhyarani Biswas

Natural fibres have long been used as cost cutting fillers in the plastics industry. Now a day, they are considered to be a potential replacement of glass fibers for use in composite materials. However, although natural fibres have many advantages, the most important being their low cost and low density, they are not totally free of problems. The present study focuses on the development, optimization and characterization of pine bark reinforced with polyester resin by the use of cement by-pass dust (CBPD) as a filler material. For this a standard pin-on-disc experimental test set up and Taguchi orthogonal array are used. This method not only determines the significant interaction and respective factors but also determines the significant interaction factor combination. Finally, GeneticAlgorithm(GA), a popular evolutionary approach, is employed to optimize the factor settings for minimize specific wear rate under specific experimental conditions have been determined. The methodology described here is expected to be highly beneficial to manufacturing industries, and also other areas such as aerospace, automobile and tool making industries.