Solid Particle Erosion of Short Glass Fiber Reinforced Polyester Composite

Abstract

This paper investigates the physical, impact behaviour and erosive wear properties of polyester composite materials reinforced with five different glass fibre loading (10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 wt.-%). Erosive wear property is studied under different impingement angles (30° to 90°), different impact velocities (43 m/s to 65 m/s) and dry silica sand particle (350 µm) is used as an erodent material. The results indicates that in case of erosive wear composite with 30 wt.-% of glass fiber contents shows better erosion resistance both in impingement angle and impact velocity effect as compare to the other composites. The physical properties and impact strength of the investigated composites found to be improving with fiber loading. At last the morphologies of eroded surface are examined by the scanning electron microscopy to investigate the nature of wear and material damage mode.