Quantification of wear in glass reinforced epoxy resin composites using surface profilometry and assessing effect of surfacing film involvement

This paper investigates the performance of glass reinforced epoxy resin composites in plate-on-plate type sliding wear. Wherein the samples were subjected to wear on a specially designed wear test rig for 20,000 cycles under an external load of 10 N. Also, the effect of using carbide-based surfacing film on the intensity of resulting wear was studied. The quantification of the amount of wear, though in cubic micron volume, was uniquely done by the criteria of surface profilometry. Two methods of surface profilometry – (i) manual type using Mitutoyo SJ310 and (ii) automated setup using KLA P7 Tencor, were followed to quantify the wear. Of which the automated measurement data were further processed using a developed MATLAB code to uniquely quantify the wear volume instead of giving only the surface parameters unlike regular measurements. The designed code also allowed the visualization of the surface profile, for effective comparison of the before and after wear data. The results show that the involvement of carbide surfacing film dramatically reduces the wear, as the volumetric wear observed in such samples were almost 70% less as compared to the uncoated samples. Though, there were hardly any difference after wear between the samples having single and triple layers of surfacing film. Hence, it was concluded that single layer of surfacing film would suffice for getting the effectiveness for wear resistance over three layers for the tested 20,000 number of wear cycles.