Influence of Ceramic Particles Additives on the Mechanical Properties and Machinability of Carbon Fiber/Polymer Composites

Abstract

Hybrid polymer composites have become the interest of the world, especially in mechanical and electronic applications. Recently, advanced machining techniques such as abrasive water jet machining of hybrid polymer composites have been used to solve many problems including the ability to form complex shapes, high performance, better surface features, and high levels of accuracy. In this study, the effect of ceramic particle (SiC and Al2O3) constituents on the mechanical properties and machinability of the hybrid polymer composites was investigated. The results of mechanical tests showed that an improvement in the tensile and flexural properties appeared using a hybrid polymer constituent (70 wt% Epoxy + 15 wt% CF + 10 wt% Sic + 5 wt% Al2O3). However, this hybrid polymer constituent includes the lowest value of impact strength. Also, the morphological analysis indicated the uniform distribution of particles, the best defect-free surface, and the bonding strength between the reinforcement and the epoxy matrix can be obtained using this constituent which has contributed to the improvement of the mechanical properties. The abrasive water jet automation process was also performed based on the design of experiment (Taguchi L18 design) to study the machinability the hybrid polymer composites in terms of surface roughness, hardness, and kerf width. The analysis of variance concluded that the constituent (70 wt% Epoxy + 15 wt% CF + 10 wt% Sic + 5 wt% Al2O3) has the most influential factor on the machinability of the hybrid polymer composite followed by traverse velocity, and then stand of distance that used during abrasive water jet machining. Moreover, the grey relational analysis was beneficially used to determine the multi-optimization of abrasive water jet machining parameters.