Abstract
The present study aims at introducing a newly developed natural fiber called castor oil fiber, termed ricinus communis, as a possible reinforcement in tribo-composites. Unidirectional short castor oil fiber reinforced epoxy resin composites of different fiber lengths with 40% volume fraction were fabricated using hand layup technique. Dry sliding wear tests were performed on a pin-on-disc tribometer based on full factorial design of experiments (DoE) at four fiber lengths (5, 10, 15, and 20 mm), three normal loads (15, 30, and 45 N), and three sliding distances (1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 m). The effect of individual parameters on the amount of wear, interfacial temperature, and coefficient of friction was studied using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The composite with 5 mm fiber length provided the best tribological properties than 10, 15, and 20 mm fiber length composites. The worn surfaces were analyzed under scanning electron microscope. Also, the tribological behavior of the composites was predicted using regression, artificial neural network (ANN)-single hidden layer, and ANN-multi hidden layer models. The confirmatory test results show the reliability of predicted models. ANN with multi hidden layers are found to predict the tribological performance accurately and then followed by ANN with single hidden layer and regression model.
Highlights
In the recent times, there has been an increased usage of polymeric materials for tribological components such as guide rails, plastic gears, sliding bearings, and artificial joints etc., as an alternative to metals [1]
5 mm fiber length can be considered as the best fiber length among 5–20 mm fiber lengths for the best tribological performance
analysis of variance (ANOVA) results indicated that load is the highly influential parameter affecting the amount of wear, CoF, and interfacial temperature followed by fiber length and sliding distance
Summary
There has been an increased usage of polymeric materials for tribological components such as guide rails, plastic gears, sliding bearings, and artificial joints etc., as an alternative to metals [1]. This is due to the desirable characteristics of the polymers such as light weight, self-lubrication, noise reduction, and high productivity. Natural fibers as reinforcements in polymeric materials have gained new interests for tribological applications because of easy availability, simple fiber extraction process, less weight, inexpensive, and biodegradable. During the fabrication of natural fiber composites, locally available inexpensive plant fibers can be preferred for tribological applications after analyzing their feasibility
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