Physico-mechanical and erosive wear analysis of polyester fibre-based nonwoven fabric-reinforced polymer composites

Abstract

The research work aims to study the physico-mechanical and erosive wear behaviour of polyester fibre-based needle-punched nonwoven fabric mat reinforced epoxy composites. Therefore, the epoxy composites with varying proportion of polyester fibre-based needle-punched nonwoven fabric mat were fabricated and characterized for their physical, mechanical and erosive wear properties. The experimental results indicated that the increase of fibre content enhanced the physical and mechanical properties of the composites. To optimize and improve the erosive wear performance of fabricated composites, the Taguchi method was implemented. For this, L₂₇ orthogonal array was constructed to examine the influence of the five control factors including impingement angle, impact velocity, stand-off distance, fibre content and erodent size. The experimental schedule was carried out in an air jet erosion test rig. The results indicate that the impact velocity emerges as the most significant control factor affecting the erosive wear of fabricated composites. Finally, the possible erosive wear mechanisms were studied by examining the composites eroded surfaces with scanning electron microscopy.

Keywords

Nonwoven fabric polymer–matrix composites mechanical solid particle erosion

Introduction

In the last few decades, a push towards cost-effective lightweight materials has brought extreme enthusiasm in the field of polymer composites [1]. Nowadays, polymer composites have been raised as feasible options to some customary materials, for example metals and alloys because of their inalienable properties including the simplicity of fabrication and cost-effectiveness [2]. In fact due to their remarkable properties, polymer composites have swapped most conventional materials for various applications [3]. Fibre-reinforced polymer composites are extensively used as structural materials in various engineering parts and components are owing to their excellent mechanical properties [4 –6]. Literature suggests that difficulties in the fabrication of fibre-reinforced polymer composites arise due to the fibres structural/dispersion instability, which ultimately results in degraded mechanical properties [7]. On the other hand, needle-punched nonwoven fabric (NPNF) has good structural stability and successfully used as reinforcement in polymer composites [8 –10]. Polymer composites, made with NPNF, offer good mechanical properties and used in aerospace transportation, household and industrial applications [11,12].

In polymer composite applications, in addition to their outstanding mechanical properties, it should be recollected that composites experience wear and destruction by the impact of solid particles present in the surroundings [13]. These solid particles, moving with different velocities, will strike the surface at various angles and instantaneously remove some materials from it. Moreover, the mechanical properties of composites can be degraded by the localized impact of solid particles [7]. Therefore, polymer composites must not only have high mechanical properties, but also be highly resistant to erosive wear.

The erosive wear performance of fibre-reinforced polymer composites was studied by various researchers [13 –18]. Carbon fibre-reinforced polyetherimide and polyetheretherketone composites were assessed for erosive wear at multiple impingement angles and fibre orientations by Rattan and Bijwe [13] and Tewari et al. [14], respectively. The effect of fibre content and impingement angles on the erosive wear performance of glass fibre-reinforced polymer composites was studied by Barkoula and Karger-Kocsis [15]. Sarı and Sınmazçelik [16] investigate the influence of erodent speed and impingement angle on the erosive wear behaviour of carbon fibre-reinforced polymer composites. They concluded that the erosive wear remains maximum for the erodent, striking the sample with higher speed and higher impingement angles compared to the lower erodent speed. Bagci [17] studied the erosive wear behaviour of glass fibre-based epoxy composites and concluded that impingement angle and impact speed were the main control factors affecting the erosive wear performance. Conversely, the erosive wear behaviour of NPNF-based polymer composites has been studied to an insufficient amount. Patnaik and co workers [18 –20] have examined the influence of viscose and polypropylene-based NPNF mats on the thermo-mechanical and erosive wear performance of epoxy composites. They concluded that inclusion of NPNF resulted in improved thermo-mechanical and erosive wear properties. Moreover, nonwoven fibrous reinforcement was also reported to enhance the mechanical and viscoelastic properties of polymer composites by various researchers [8 –10,21 –24].

The presented literature survey reveals that significant amount of work has been conducted on erosive wear assessment of fibre-reinforced polymer composites, but very few literature is available on NPNF-reinforced polymer composites. However, the erosive wear performance of polyester fibre-based NPNF-reinforced polymer composites has not been reported so far. This study was therefore aimed to investigate the physical, mechanical and erosive wear properties of epoxy composites reinforced polyester fibre-based NPNF. Taguchi-based design of experiment approach has been utilized to examine the effect of various control factors. The paper is organized as follows. In the next section, the experimental details (fabrication, characterization and Taguchi methodology) are discussed. Then, the results of physical, mechanical and erosive wear properties are presented. The conclusions are stated in the final section.

Experimental details

Materials and methods

Epoxy resins are unique among all the thermosetting resins because of its excellent corrosion and weather resistance, service capability at a higher temperature, excellent mechanical properties, and generally lower pressure is required for products fabrication [25,26]. For the fabrication of the composite, epoxy resin (LY 556) with corresponding polyamine hardener (HY 951) was taken as a matrix material, while polyester fibre-based NPNF mat was taken as reinforcing component. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of the polyester fibre-based NPNF is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

SEM image of the polyester fibre-based NPNF. SEM: scanning electron microscope; NPNF: needle-punched nonwoven fabric.

Conventional hand-lay-up technique fabricated three composites with varying proportion of resin and NPNF mat (Table 1). For curing, hardener was added to the epoxy in the ratio of 10:1 by weight [24]. Composites were fabricated in the form of plaque through 24 h casting at room temperature. Finally, these plaques were cut into required sizes for the evaluation of physical, mechanical and wear characterization (Figure 2).

Table 1.

Designation and compositions of composites.

Designation	Composition (wt.%)
Designation	Epoxy	Polyester fibre
PE-10	90	10
PE-20	80	20
PE-30	70	30

Figure 2.

Fabricated composite specimens for (a) mechanical testing and (b) after wear testing.

Physical and mechanical characterization

The fabricated composites were characterized for their physical (density and void content) and mechanical properties (hardness, tensile strength, flexural strength and impact energy). Standard water displacement method was used for the density measurement. Void content was determined by normalizing the experimental density with theoretical density [27]. The hardness of the composites was measured on digital hardness tester following Rockwell-B scale, whereas ASTM D256 was used for impact energy measurement. For the determination of tensile and flexural strength, tests were performed on flat composite samples as per the ASTM D3039-76 and ASTM D2344-84 standards, respectively.

Solid particle erosion

An erosion test rig (ASTM: G 76, DUCOM-India) was used to study the erosive wear performance of the fabricated composites. The schematic diagram of erosion test rig is shown in Figure 3. The detailed description of the test rig and procedure is reported elsewhere [18]. In brief, the dry compressed air mixed with the erodent particles falling at a constant rate from a sand flow control knob is through a tungsten carbide material-based nozzle. These erodent particles at different velocities impact the composite sample which can be held at different angles as per the experimental design. The velocity of the eroding particles is determined using a rotating double disc method [28]. Different sizes (250 µm, 350 µm, 450 µm) of silica sand particles were used as erodent and 30 mm × 30 mm × 2.5 to 5 mm sized composites specimen were used for erosion testing.

Figure 3.

(a) View of the device, (b) Schematic of air jet erosion test rig [18 –20].

Composite samples were eroded by varying dry silica sand size with varying impact velocity, impingement angle and stand-off distance in the erosion test rig for 15 min. Before and after the erosion, composite samples were cleaned with acetone to remove sand particles from the surface of composites. Finally, the erosion rate (ratio of the weight loss (mg) to the total mass of the erodent particles (kg) that have impacted on the samples) was calculated to study the erosive wear behaviour of the composites.

Experimental design

In this work, Taguchi method was used to determine the optimal process parameters for erosion wear analysis. The Taguchi technique provides a systematic and efficient methodology for process optimization and widely used for product design and development worldwide [29 –33]. Five control factors are used to examine the erosion wear performance in this research work, namely: impact velocity, fibre content, impingement angle, stand-off distance and erodent size. The selected control factors and their levels are presented in Table 2.

Table 2.

Control factors and levels.

	Control factor
	A: Impact velocity (m/s)	B: Fibre Content (wt.%)	C: Impingement angle (degree, °)	D: Stand-off distance (mm)	E: Erodent size (µm)
Level-I	43	10	30	65	250
Level-II	54	20	60	75	350
Level-III	65	30	90	85	450

An L₂₇ orthogonal array has been used to determine the optimal control factor combination for minimizing the erosive wear rate of the fabricated composites and the designed experimental runs are given in Table 3. To improve the statistical analysis, the results obtained from the experimental runs are transformed into a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). There are three types of transformation characteristics, namely larger-the-better, smaller-the-better and nominal-the-better. In this study, wear of the composites is expected to be as small as possible. Hence, the smaller-the-better characteristic is used to transform the raw data of wear. The SNR characteristic is given as [34]:

Smaller-the-better characteristic SNR = - 10 log \frac{1}{x} (\sum α^{2})

(1)

where α represents the erosive wear response, and x denotes the number of experiments.

Table 3.

The orthogonal array of L₂₇ Taguchi design.

Experiment run	Control factors
Experiment run	A: Impact velocity	B: Fibre content	C: Impingement angle	D: Stand-off distance	E: Erodent size
1	43	10	30	65	250
2	43	10	60	75	350
3	43	10	90	85	450
4	43	20	30	75	350
5	43	20	60	85	450
6	43	20	90	65	250
7	43	30	30	85	450
8	43	30	60	65	250
9	43	30	90	75	350
10	54	10	30	75	450
11	54	10	60	85	250
12	54	10	90	65	350
13	54	20	30	85	250
14	54	20	60	65	350
15	54	20	90	75	450
16	54	30	30	65	350
17	54	30	60	75	450
18	54	30	90	85	250
19	65	10	30	85	350
20	65	10	60	65	450
21	65	10	90	75	250
22	65	20	30	65	450
23	65	20	60	75	250
24	65	20	90	85	350
25	65	30	30	75	250
26	65	30	60	85	350
27	65	30	90	65	450

Finally, for determining the effectiveness of each control factor, contribution ratio $(CR)$ will be calculated as [35]

C R_{i} (%) = \frac{{(SNR)}_{max, i} - {(SNR)}_{min, i}}{\sum_{i = 1}^{j} [{(SNR)}_{max, i} - {(SNR)}_{min, i}]} \times 100

(2)

where i represent the respected control factor and j is the total number of control factors.

Results and discussion

Physical and mechanical properties

The results of physical and mechanical properties of the investigated composites are given in Table 4. It can be seen from Table 4 that the density of the composites remained in the range of 1.142 ± 0.10 g/cm³, whereas the void content remains in the range of 0.040 ± 0.008%. It is found that the density and void content of the composites increases with increase in the fibre content. This increased trend in density was expected as the addition of high dense (1.38 g/cm³) polyester fibre content was done by removing an equal amount of low dense (1.15 g/cm³) epoxy.

Table 4.

Physical and mechanical properties of the composites.

Properties	Composite
Properties	PE-10	PE-20	PE-30
Density (g/cm³)	1.132	1.140	1.152
Void content (%) theoretical	0.032	0.042	0.048
Hardness (HRB) ASTM D785	42	51	57
Tensile strength (MPa) ASTM D3039-76	24.59	28.27	31.66
Flexural strength (MPa) ASTM D2344-84	34.56	41.96	49.56
Impact energy (J) ASTM D256	1.16	1.69	2.13

As expected, the void content of the composites increases with increasing polyester fibre content because these NPNF mats are porous in nature. Moreover, the mechanical properties, i.e. tensile strength, hardness, flexural strength and impact energy were increased with increased fibre content. This may be attributed to the fact that with increased fibre content, the packing or integrity of the fibrous ingredients in the cured epoxy resin improves which results in enhanced mechanical properties. Similar outcomes have also been reported in previous studies, where increased mechanical properties were registered for nonwoven fibre-reinforced polymer composites [20 –24].

Parametric analysis of erosive wear

The main intention of the study is to find the optimum combination of control factors for achieving minimum erosive wear rate. Therefore, 27 experiments were designed with the aim of relating the influence of selected control factors namely impact velocity, stand-off distance, impingement angle, fibre content and erodent size. These control factors are distinct to each other and play a vital role in erosive wear determination. In fact, Taguchi suggests analysing the SNR using a conceptual approach which includes graphing the effect of control factors and outwardly recognizing the critical factors. The results of 27 experimental runs regarding erosive wear rate with corresponding SNR are presented in Table 5. From Table 5, the overall mean for the SNR of the erosive wear rate is found to be −45.6027 db. Figure 4 shows the effect of the five control factors on erosive wear rate. The analyses were done with MINITAB 16 software specially used for the design of experiment applications. It has been known that the level having highest SNR is the optimal level for the factor and the combinations of levels showing the most significant S–N ratio for each factor are regarded as the optimal level combination that yields lower erosive wear rate. Analysis of Figure 4 leads to the conclusion that for the polyester fibre-based nonwoven reinforced composites factors combination as A₁ (impact velocity, 43 m/s), B₁ (fibre loading, 10 wt.%), C₃ (impingement angle, 90°), D₃ (stand-off distance, 85 mm) and E₃ (erodent size, 450 µm) give minimum erosive wear rate.

Table 5.

Experimental results and corresponding SNR.

Experiment run	ER	SNR (db)	Experiment No.	ER	SNR (db)
1	33.81	−30.58	15	149.56	−43.50
2	156.11	−43.87	16	243.95	−47.75
3	32.47	−30.23	17	206.46	−46.30
4	88.17	−38.91	18	197.22	−45.90
5	63.49	−36.05	19	695.88	−56.85
6	94.81	−39.54	20	495.28	−53.90
7	90.19	−39.10	21	467.33	−53.39
8	244.30	−47.76	22	510.33	−54.16
9	106.83	−40.57	23	676.13	−56.60
10	95.45	−39.60	24	413.06	−52.32
11	158.41	−44.00	25	334.72	−50.49
12	127.50	−42.11	26	525.33	−54.41
13	147.71	−43.39	27	415.23	−52.37
14	240.91	−47.64	Overall SNR mean		−45.6027

SNR: signal-to-noise ratio.

Figure 4.

Main-effect plots for SNR of erosive wear rate. SNR: signal-to-noise ratio.

Based on the experimental data in Table 5, the effects of control factors on the SNR of erosive wear were obtained, and results are described in Table 6. For factorial effect, the average SNR of each factor was calculated. For example, in Table 6, the average SNR for level 1 (43 m/s) of factor A (impact velocity) is obtained by calculating the SNR responses of experiment runs 1 to 9, which all involve level 1 of factor A (see Table 3).

Table 6.

Response table for signal to noise ratios of erosive wear rate.

Level	A: Impact velocity	B: Fibre content	C: Impingement angle	D: Stand-off distance	E: Erodent size
Average SNR (dB)
1	−38.51	−43.84	−44.54	−46.20	−45.74
2	−44.46	−45.79	−47.84	−45.91	−47.16
3	−53.83	−47.18	−44.44	−44.69	−43.91
Delta	15.32	3.35	3.40	1.50	3.25
Rank	1	3	2	5	4

SNR: signal-to-noise ratio.

It was evident from Figure 4 and Table 6 that the impact velocity had the most significant effect on the erosive wear rate of the fabricated composites. It can be seen that the erosive wear rate increases linearly with the increase in impact velocity. This may be attributed to the severe impact between the erodent and composite due to the increased kinetic energy of the erodent particles at higher impact velocities [16,35]. The variation of impingement angle had affected the erosive wear rate after impact velocity. It can be observed that the erosive wear rate increased with an increase in the impingement angle from 30° to 60° and then decreased for angles >60°. This might be so since the scratching ability of impingement angle increased with decreasing the normal angle [16,17,36 –38].

Moreover, delta in Table 6 defined as the difference between the maximum and minimum average SNR of each control factor. Furthermore, the CR of control factors was calculated by using equation (2) and depicted in Figure 5. From Figure 5, it can be seen that the order of the control factor effectiveness for erosive wear rate is A > C > B > E > D. It is clear from Figure 5 that the impact velocity has the most significant effect on erosive wear rate with 57.12%, whereas impingement angle, fibre content and erodent size have almost similar impact with ∼12%. The stand-off distance has low contribution towards erosive wear with 5.59%.

Figure 5.

Contribution ratio of control factors.

Steady-state erosive wear assessment

From Taguchi analysis, it is found that the control factors like impact velocity and impingement angle cause significant effects on the erosive wear rate. Therefore, experiments for steady state erosive wear assessment are carried out with impact velocity and impingement angle variations. The plot of erosive wear rate of different composites as a function of impact velocity is shown in Figure 6, while other control factors such as stand-off distance, impingement angle and erodent size remain fixed. One can see that erosive wear rate increases gradually with increased erodent impact velocity and fibre loading. This possibly may be because, with increased in velocity, the erodent strikes the composite surface with higher kinetic energy thereby creating considerable stresses on the composite surface, resulting in increased erosive wear rate [17]. Among fabricated composites, 30 wt.% fibre-reinforced composite exhibit highest erosive wear rate. This increase in wear with increased fibre loading may be due to the improvement in the brittleness of the epoxy with the addition of fibrous reinforcement.

Figure 6.

Erosive wear rate as a function of impact velocity.

Apart from impact velocity, impingement angle was other control factor affecting the erosive wear rate of the composites. The plot of erosive wear rate as a function of impingement angle for fabricated epoxy composites is shown in Figure 7, while other control factors such as stand-off distance, impact velocity and erodent size remain fixed. As can be seen in Figure 7, there was an increase in erosive wear rate of the composites with increasing impingement angle from 30° to 60°, and then erosive wear rate of the composites decreases above 60° of impingement angle. The erosive wear rate remains maximum at an impingement angle of 60° irrespective of the fibre loading and also found to increase with increased fibre loading. This may be because, at 60°, the erodent strikes the composite surface at larger area causes higher deformation. Moreover, with the increase of the impingement angle (>60°), the erosive wear rates tend to decrease. The erosive wear rate remains lowest at 90° impingement angle. It is worth noting that the decrease in erodent striking area at 90° also resulted in a smaller surface deformation. It is reported in the literature that when an erodent strikes the composite surface, its force of impact will be separated into two components namely tangential and normal. The tangential force component relies upon the erodent, whereas the normal force component controls the impact of erodent. For lower impingement angles, for example 60°, the erodent scavenging effects (due to tangential force component) on the surface were higher yielding higher wear. On the other hand, for 90° impingement angle, the tangential force components effects are reduced to a more significant extend, and for normal force component, the energy is dissipated by the impact and the kinetic energy loss, which results in lower wear [17,36 –38].

Figure 7.

Erosive wear rate as a function of impingement angle.

Eroded surface morphology of composites

The surface morphology of the eroded composites for identification of main wear mechanisms has been carried with SEM. Figures 8 and 9 present the micrographs of the examined eroded surfaces. Figure 8(a) shows the micrograph of the PE-10 composite with erosion conditions of impact velocity 43 m/s, impingement angle 90°, stand-off distance 85 mm and erodent size 450 µm. The micrograph in Figure 8(a) reveals that no severe deformation occurred on the eroded surface. One can observe that some material, which had been removed from the surface of the composite by the production of the crater, was still lying inside the crater.

Figure 8.

SEM micrographs of eroded surface of (a) PE-10 composite with impingement angle 90 °; (b) PE-20 composite with impingement angle 60 ° at a fixed combination of stand-off distance (85 mm), erodent size (450 µm) and impact velocity (43 m/s). SEM: scanning electron microscope.

Figure 9.

SEM micrographs of eroded surface of PE-30 composite with, (a) impact velocity 54 m/s. (b) Impact velocity 65 m/s at a fixed combination of stand-off distance (85 mm), erodent size (450 µm) and impingement angle (60 °). SEM: scanning electron microscope.

The surface morphology of PE-20 composite eroded with impact velocity 43 m/s, impingement angle 60°, stand-off distance 85 mm and erodent size 450 µm is presented in Figure 8(b). The erodent affected zones were found severely across the eroded surface of PE-20 composite. It can be seen from the eroded surface of the composite that material removal is mostly due to the micro-cutting and micro-ploughing mechanism.

Figure 9(a) and (b) highlights the damage of the PE-30 composites at higher 54 m/s and 65 m/s of impact velocity with impingement angle 60°, stand-off distance 85 mm and erodent size 450 µm. The microscopic images reveal evidence of micro-cutting and micro-ploughing similar to that observed on the eroded surface of PE-20 composites (Figure 8(b)). However, the intensity of deformed zones on the PE-30 composite surface at 65 m/s of impact velocity (Figure 9(b)) is noticeably higher, compared to PE-30 composite surface eroded at 54 m/s of impact velocity (Figure 9(a)), which highlights the disadvantageous effect of higher velocity on the erosive wear rate. Moreover, at higher velocities, erosion is dominated by cracking and pull-out of the materials from the composite surface. Repeated erodent impacts cause cracking and as these cracks grow/propagate, the material gets loosened, and it is eventually dislodged from the surface causing higher wear.

Conclusions

In this study, epoxy composites reinforced with polyester fibre-based NPNF were fabricated and evaluated for physical, mechanical and erosive wear properties. The effect of various control factors on the erosive wear behaviour of the fabricated composites was investigated with the help of Taguchi design of experiments approach. The Taguchi analysis has been performed to find out with the most favourable set of control factors for minimizing the erosive wear. The following remarks can be drawn from the study:

Increase in NPNF content led to increase in density, void content, hardness, impact energy, tensile and flexural strength.

The erosive wear behaviour of the composites is greatly influenced by the control factors viz. impact velocity, fibre content, impingement angle, stand-off distance and erodent size. The CR of each of these control factors on erosive wear is 57.12%, 12.49%, 12.68%, 5.59% and 12.12%, respectively. The order of control factors which dominate the erosive wear is, impact velocity > impingement angle>fibre content>erodent size > stand-off distance.

The combination of control factors with impact velocity 43 m/s, fibre content 10 wt.%, impingement angle 90°, stand-off distance 85 mm and erodent size 450 µm is obtained to minimize the erosive wear rate.

The erosive wear rate of composites increases with the increase of NPNF content and increase in impact velocity of erodent, whereas maximum erosive wear rate occurred at 60° impingement angle for all composites indicating that the fabricated composites exhibit semi-ductile erosive wear behaviour.

Studies of eroded surface morphologies indicated that micro-cutting, micro-ploughing, crater formation and surface cracking are the main mechanisms for wear initiation.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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