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Erosive wear of carbon fabric reinforced polyetherimide composites: Role of amount of fabric and processing technique
Author(s) -
Bijwe J.,
Rattan Rekha,
Fahim M.,
Tiwari Sudhir
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
polymer composites
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.577
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1548-0569
pISSN - 0272-8397
DOI - 10.1002/pc.20544
Subject(s) - polyetherimide , materials science , composite material , composite number , resilience (materials science) , wear resistance , epoxy , polymer
Plain weave carbon fabric (CF) reinforced Polyetherimide (PEI) composites, hereafter referred to as CF‐PEI composites, containing 40, 55, 65, 75, and 85 vol% of CF were developed using impregnation technique and compression moulding. An additional CF‐PEI composite containing 52 vol% of CF was also fabricated using film technique and compression moulding. These composites were developed in order to explore the effect of fabric content and processing technique on strength properties and erosive wear performance of PEI. These six composites along with unfilled PEI were evaluated for their physical and mechanical properties. The erosive wear performance of these materials was evaluated using angular silica particles as erodent at an impingement angle of 30°. It was observed that fabric content strongly influenced the strength properties as well as erosion resistance. Strength performance, however, did not linearly increase with increase in fabric content. Lowest (40%) and highest (85%) amount of fabric proved least effective in this regard. Similar observations were observed in the case of wear resistance ( W R ). CF in the range of 55–75 vol% proved optimum for strength properties and wear performance barring PEI, which showed highest W R . Between the two processing techniques, impregnation technique (I) proved far superior to the film technique (F) in both strength and wear performance. A fairly good correlation was observed between erosion resistance and a product of interlaminar shear strength, resilience, and elongation. SEM studies on worn surfaces supported the wear behavior. POLYM. COMPOS., 2008. © 2008 Society of Plastics Engineers