Effect of surface treatment of carbon fibers on the mechanical and frictional properties of polyetheretherketone/polytetrafluoroethylene composites: Experimentation and finite element analysis

Abstract

Polytetrafluoroethylene has many excellent properties and a wide range of applications, but its poor wear resistance, hardness, and creep resistance have severely limited the use of the polytetrafluoroethylene composites. In this work, the surface of carbon fibers was treated with silane coupling agent acetone solution, and then sintering technology was used to prepare carbon fibers/polyetheretherketone (PEEK)/ polytetrafluoroethylene composites. The mechanical and frictional wear properties of the composites were analyzed using an electronic tensile tester, a Shore hardness tester, and a frictional wear tester, and scanning electron microscopy was applied to analyze the surface morphology of the composites after wear. The experimental results shown that the addition of carbon fibers could significantly improve the mechanical properties of the composites, reduce the radial shrinkage, and increase the Shore hardness of the composites. Under the same experimental conditions, the carbon fibers (20 wt.%) /polyetheretherketone/polytetrafluoroethylene composites has the best wear resistance, with a friction coefficient of 0.196 and the wear rate of 2.41 ×  10⁻⁶ mm³/N·m. In the theoretical simulation, the thermal conductivity of polytetrafluoroethylene composites was predicted using ANSYS software, with the changes in the temperature and friction force in the friction process. The theoretical simulation results matched with the experimental values, which proved the accuracy of the theoretical simulations.