7. Erosive Wear Behaviour of Carbon Fiber/Silicon Nitride Polymer Composite for Automotive Application

The automotive industry is experiencing a radical change where the metallic components are replaced with the light weight fiber reinforced composite materials. Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) components are an effective alternate offering improved properties such as reduced weight, good mechanical strength, corrosion resistance etc. Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) is lighter than aluminum and stronger than iron and exhibits higher elasticity than titanium. In the present study, the carbon fiber and Silicon Nitride (Si₃Ni₄) filler is used to fabricate FRP composite. Carbon fiber has high strength to volume ratio, high chemical resistance, low weight, high stiffness and high tensile strength whereas Si₃Ni₄ is an abrasion resistant and thermally conductive material. Carbon fiber reinforced epoxy matrix composite is fabricated using vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) technique with different weight percent of silicon nitride (0, 10, 20 and 30 wt%). 10 layers of carbon fiber are stacked in the glass mould for the fabrication of the composite. The erosion test is performed with varying impingement angle from 45–90°, impact velocity from 30 to 60 m/s and filler content from 0 to 30 wt%. It is found from the Taguchi design of experiment that the impact velocity is most significant factor and the filler content is the least significant factor. However, increase in the filler content increase the wear resistance of the fabricated composite.