Influence of reinforcement and lubrication on abrasive wear performance of polyamide

This paper presents the results of studies on the wear performance of various composites of polyamide (nylon 6,6) reinforced with short carbon fibres and lubricated with a solid lubricant, PTFE, under adverse sliding conditions (abrasive wear). The effects of increasing amounts of fillers, fibre orientation, and experimental parameters such as load, and abrading particle size were investigated. The studies revealed that fillers that are very much suitable for adhesive wear applications are detrimental for the abrasive wear mode. Moreover, wear performance showed deterioration with increasing amount of filler concentration. The combination of heterogeneous fillers proved to be detrimental for wear performance. Efforts were made to correlate these investigations with appropriate mechanical properties. It was found that wear performance was greatly influenced by selected experimental parameters. Worn surfaces were examined with SEM to have better insight of the wear mechanism.