Evaluation of engineering polymeric composites for abrasive wear performance

The paper pertains to the studies of influence of short glass fibre reinforcement on abrasive wear behaviour of high performance polyetherimide (PEI) composites. A series of composites of PEI and its copolymer reinforced with short glass fibres (GF) in the range of 0-40% were selected. Abrasive wear studies were conducted under various testing conditions such as load, abrasive grit size, fibre orientation, etc. Based on these investigations, it was observed that short fibre reinforcement in optimum proportion showed better performance than the parent polymer. Wear versus fibre concentration curve showed minima at 30% GF loading and maxima at 10% and 20% GF loadings depending on the counterface selected indicating wear performance was maximum at 30% fibre concentration which deteriorated with further reinforcement. Various parametres such as hardness, ultimate tensile strength, elongation to break were critically analysed for investigating wear property correlations. SEM was used for examining worn surface topography.