Influence of ceramic particles additives on the mechanical properties and machinability of carbon fiber/ polymer composites

Abstract

Abstract Hybrid polymer composites have recently become the interest of the world and their uses are increasing in various applications, especially mechanical, electronic, and other applications. Recently, advanced machining techniques for hybrid polymer composites have been used to solve many problems during machining processes, including the ability to form complex shapes, high performance, better surface features, and high levels of accuracy. Among many machining processes, Abrasive Water Jet Machining (AWJM) has attracted the attention of many researchers and engineers in many industries. In this study, hybrid polymer composites consisting of an epoxy matrix reinforced with six layers of carbon fibers with a fixed percentage (15%) and ceramic particles (SiC and Al2O3) with different weight percentage were prepared by hand lay-up method. Mechanical tests including (tensile test, flexural test, impact and hardness test) were conducted. The results of mechanical tests showed that an improvement in the tensile and flexural properties was of (19.7%) in the tensile strength, (40%) in the modulus of elasticity, )55.26%( in the flexural strength and )69.49%( in the flexural modulus,) 12%( in the hardness using hybrid polymer constituent (70 wt% Epoxy+15 wt% CF +10 wt% Sic +5 wt% Al2O3). However, this hybrid polymer constituent includes lowest value of impact strength. Also, the morphological analysis indicated the uniform distribution of particles, the best defect-free surface and the bonding strength between the reinforcement and the epoxy matrix can be obtained using this constituent which has contributed to the improvement in the mechanical properties. The AWJM automation process was also performed based on design of experiment (Taguchi L18 design) to study the effect of the selected AWJM parameters (the hybrid polymer constituents, transverse velocity, stand of distance) on the different response variables (surface roughness, hardness, and kerf width). The analysis of variance (ANOVA) concluded that the hybrid polymer with the constituents (70 wt% Epoxy+15 wt% CF +10 wt% Sic +5 wt% Al2O3) has the most influential factor on the responses followed by transverse velocity, and then stand of distance. Moreover, the grey relational analysis was beneficially used to determine the multi optimization of AWJM parameters.