Investigation of erosive wear behavior and physical properties of SGF and/or calcite reinforced ABS/PA6 composites

The aim of this study was to investigate the erosive wear behavior of glass fiber, CaCO3 particle and glass fiber/CaCO3 hybrid reinforced ABS/PA6 blend based composites. The samples were prepared by using melt mixing and injection molding techniques. The mechanical, thermal, morphological properties and erosive wear behavior were investigated in terms of reinforcing agent type and composition. It was observed that the tensile strength and modulus values of hybrid composites gave a value between tensile strength and modulus values of only fiber reinforced composites and only particle reinforced composites. From DSC analysis it was revealed that T-g and T-m of composites were not significantly affected by reinforcement; however, degree of crystallinity was found to be sensitive to reinforcement type and composition. The impingement angle was found to have a significant effect on the erosive wear behavior. The results indicated that composite materials exhibited maximum erosion rate at impact angle of 30 degrees conforming their ductile erosion behavior. In order to investigate wear mechanisms, eroded surface analysis was done by scanning electron microscopy. Surface analysis showed that repeated impact of hard silica sand particles caused a local removal of the matrix from the fiber surface and led to form craters on the surface of the composite material. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.