Experimental and numerical investigation on slurry erosion performance of hybrid glass/steel fiber reinforced polymer composites for marine applications

Abstract

AbstractThe accelerating growth in the utilization of industrial waste to prepare sustainable material is gaining interest of researchers globally owing to their synergistic effect with enhanced performance and cost‐effective approach. This study mainly discussed the development of hybrid polymer composites by partial replacement of steel fiber in place of synthetic glass fiber to investigate the slurry erosion performance in an erosive environment. Initially, fabrication of hybrid glass/steel fiber reinforced polymer composites with different weight percentages (38, 37, 36, 35 wt%) glass fiber and (11, 12, 13, 14 wt%) steel fiber are fabricated through vacuum assisted resin transfer modeling (VARTM) technique. After that, steady‐state slurry erosion performance analysis is carried out by varying impact velocity (10–40 m/s), fiber loading (4:1 to 10:4), impingement angle (30°–90°), and slurry concentration (160–265 g/min) respectively in the slurry erosive environment. The observation indicates that at steady‐state conditions the maximum erosion rate lies within the range of 45°–75° by varying the impingement angle whereas the other factors remain constant. The experimental results are validated with different theoretical models as well as a numerical simulation model using computational fluid dynamics approach. Finally, Taguchi's design of experimental analysis (L16 orthogonal array design) is studied by varying all the four factors at‐a‐time to get the erosion rate of the hybrid composites. At the end, the simulated results depicted a clear picture of erodent particle trajectories, eroded surface, and streamlines, and all are in good agreement with the experimental results.