Hiral H Parikh
Navrachana University, India
Title: Experimental investigation and prediction for tribo behavior of fillers concentrated FRP
Biography
Biography: Hiral H Parikh
Abstract
Composites have been established as one of the most promising modern materials to replace conventional metals and alloys in numerous structural and tribological applications. Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) materials developed using thermoplastic and thermosets as matrices, natural and synthetic fibers as reinforcing and organic and inorganic materials as fillers have potential owing to their high strength to weight ratio. Natural fiber reinforced materials developed using plant fibers have attached the attention of the manufacturers because of their good strength, low cost and biodegradability. In the present work, cotton fibers are used as reinforcement with the polyester resin material. Tribological characterization of a material, determines its wear and friction coefficient properties at different operating parameters such as load, sliding distance, sliding velocity, filler content, etc. Response surface Box Behnken (BB) design approach is used to create the design matrix. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) is used to investigate the morphology of worn surfaces and artificial neural network (ANN) has been used to predict the tribo behavior of the cotton fiber polyester composites. A measured experimental database was used for successful training of the ANN and the test results reveal that the fillers have significant effect on tribo behavior of cotton fiber polyester composites. The results of validation network show that predicted tribo behavior is well acceptable when comparing it with the actual experimental results. The use of cotton fiber reinforced polyester composites can be employed depending upon various applications as per the requirement. For instance, the materials offer low wear rate and low co-efficient of friction may be used for the mechanical elements like gears, seals, bushes, bearings and turbines. The materials which offer high co-efficient of friction and low wear rate may be used for the brakes and clutches.