Experimental investigations on mechanical properties and abrasive wear response of glass, kevlar and carbon fabric reinforced composites

Abstract

Comparative investigations have been done to evaluate the effect of type of fabric (glass, kevlar and carbon) reinforcement on mechanical, three body abrasive wear rate and thermo mechanical properties of epoxy matrix composites. Mechanical properties i.e. hardness, tensile strength, flexural strength, inter laminar shear strength and impact strength are determined for change in weight percentage of fabric reinforcement to notice the behavior of the material when subjected to respective loading. Experiments have been conducted to notice the effect of three body abrasive wear rate on glass, kevlar and carbon fabric. Dependent factors such as fabric reinforcement, abrasive particle size, normal load, sliding velocity and distance travelled are varied in steps to analyze the effect of each factor on type of fabric reinforcement. Results show that with increase in fabric loading the mechanical properties augment to a certain extent and further increment leads to drop in mechanical properties. Wear rate increases with the increase in normal load and other factors also have a substantial effect on abrasive wear rate. Overall behavior of carbon fabric is found to be better than that of glass and kevlar fabric reinforced composites.