Optimization of wear coefficient and coefficient of friction of borosilicate glass ceramics using Taguchi coupled grey fuzzy logic technique

Abstract

This paper outlines the evaluation of physical and mechanical properties along with wear coefficient (k) and coefficient of friction (COF) of the fabricated glass ceramics (GC). The GC were fabricated employing conventional melt quench method in 59(PbOxCaO1−x).TiO2-40(2SiO2.B2O3)-1Fe2O3 (x = 0.0, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7) composition. The tribology tests were performed on a pin on disk tribometer according to Taguchi’s L25 orthogonal array. The GC material was used as the pins that sled against an EN32 steel disk. For five different GC compositions, the sliding velocity was varied between 2.61 m/s and 4.71 m/s and the load was varied between 10 N and 30 N to perform the tribology study. The k decreases with an increase in sliding speed and increases with an increase in load, whereas the COF decreases with an increase in load and sliding speed. There is an inverse relationship of hardness with k and COF and the GC sample with x = 0.5 possess the highest hardness and least wear coefficient and coefficient of friction. The hardness at the free surface of the GC samples lies in between 23.57 GPa and 27.03 GPa. The Fuzzy Logic modeling was performed by constructing 25 sets of rules based on Mamdani Fuzzy Interference System that were simulated using fuzzy logic tool box in MATLAB 14. The quality characteristics k and COF were optimized using grey fuzzy reasoning approach (GFRA). Analysis of variance determined the percentage contribution of various control factors along with their influences on wear properties. Further, the obtained results were established via surface morphology and elemental analysis. The newly developed borosilicate GC can be used as coating materials to coat the traditional cookware materials like cast iron, stainless steel etc as well as can be used in cooktops and bakewares due to its low thermal expansion coefficient and high hardness.