Wear property of epoxy reinforced with carbon using a response surface methodology

Abstract

Wear property plays a huge role for the selection of any material in tribological applications. Carbon fabric-reinforced epoxy composites (CFRCs) including 40 wt% carbon were fabricated by compression moulding method. The dry wear behaviour of CFRCs were investigated under a conventional wear machine using a Response Surface Methodology (RSM). Box-Behnken was chosen to find out the effects of various variables such as applied load, rotational speed and sliding distance on the wear resistance of the composites against emery SiC abrasives at dry conditions. This model showed that sliding distance had a significant influence on weight loss, followed by load and rotational speed, respectively. The optimizing conditions of parameters to produce the lowest response of the weight loss for CFRCs were at first level of sliding distance, load and speed. Moreover, the percentage contributions of the load, sliding distance and speed were about 11.92%, 51.74%, 3.35%, respectively, while square was about 10.0%, and two-way interactions were about 12.74% on the weight loss, respectively.