Wear Study on Basalt, Flax and Hybrid Fiber Reinforced Phenolic Composites

Fiber reinforced polymer composites exhibits excellent mechanical and tribological properties. Due to this reason they are used in many engineering applications such as transmission and brake systems. In the present study, the wear mechanism of flax and basalt fibers reinforced phenolic composites were studied by using a pin on disc wear tester. The sliding conditions such as sliding velocity and normal force are varied from 0.1 to 0.5 m/s and 9.81 N to 49.04 N respectively. The wear map of worn out specimens were analyzed using wear mechanism map developed by using Fuzzy Clustering Method. Scanning Electron microscopy photographs were examined and wear map is correlated. Different wear mechanisms that dominated a particular wear regime were discussed in this paper.