This research article presents the fabrication and investigation of physical, thermomechanical, and erosive wear properties of glass fiber-reinforced epoxy composites with and without waste marble dust. The composites were fabricated by vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) technique under controlled operating condition. The filler material (marble dust) was varied in the range of 0-30 wt% in the composite at an interval of 10 wt% to find out the physical (density, void content, hardness and XRD), thermomechanical (storage modulus, loss modulus, damping factor, and thermal conductivity), and erosive wear rate, respectively. This study clearly demonstrated that with the increased filler content, the density, void content, and hardness of the composites were shown promising results along with the crystallinity of the composites. The storage modulus and loss modulus of the unfilled and particulate-filled composites were shown positive effect up to a temperature range of 60 C and then observed decreased trend irrespective of change in filler content with the increased temperature. However, as far as erosion rate was concerned, the particulate-filled composites were shown better wear resistance with the change in impact velocity as well as impingement angle in steady-state operating condition as compared with unfilled composite. At the end, the obtained experimental results were compared with already reported theoretical model in order to validate the results along with the microstructural analysis of composites were also studied to understand the wear mechanism. POLYM. COMPOS., 40:4113-4124, 2019.

This research work evaluates the effect of barium sulphate contents on the physical, mechanical, dynamic mechanical, and erosion wear properties of fixed glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites. Composites with 0 to 30 wt% barium sulphate were prepared by vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) technique under controlled pressure condition. The manufactured composites were characterized for physical (density, void content, and hardness), mechanical (tensile, flexural, and inter‐laminar shear strengths), dynamic mechanical, and erosion wear properties including numerical and experimental analysis. Experimental results show that the addition of increased barium sulphate content results in increased density, void content, hardness, interlaminar shear strength, and fracture toughness of the composites, while tensile and flexural properties were found to decrease above 10 wt% barium sulphate content. Erosion results revealed that the maximum wear rate was found between the ranges of 45° to 75° impingement angle, which shows semi‐ductile nature of the composites. Moreover, computational fluid dynamic (CFD simulation by ANSYS fluent) analysis was introduced to calculate the erosive wear rate, erosion scar, and then tracking the particle trajectories in order to validate the numerical results by comparing the obtained experimental results for validation. Finally, the erosion efficiency was calculated as a function of impact velocity of the proposed particulate filled composites and eroded samples were analyzed through scanning electron microscope to observe the wear characteristics of the composites.

This work explores effectiveness of marble dust as a filler in needle‐punch nonwoven jute fiber reinforced polymer composites, prepared through vacuum‐assisted resin transfer molding process. Four different particulate filled composites are fabricated by varying the filler percentage from 0 to 24 wt% at an interval of 8 wt% marble dust under the controlled environment. The mechanical characterizations such as flexural strength, interlaminar shear strength, compressive strength, and impact strength enhanced with the increase in filler wt% in the composite. The improvement rate is observed from 14% to 33% compared to the unfilled composite. However, for tensile strength is concerned with the increase in filler content in the composites, the strength shows declined in order irrespective of filler content. This study also focuses on high‐temperature applications, for that dynamic mechanical analysis is performed in a three‐point bending mode with 1 Hz frequency as a function of temperature. Similarly, in case of fracture toughness of the proposed composites, the fracture toughness increases approximately from ≈22%, 27% and 59% respectively over unfilled composite with the change in filler percentage. Simultaneously, numerical simulation for fracture toughness is also performed and compared with experimental results. The deviation is found in the range from 0% to 4% with R2 value of 0.984. Based upon the outcome of present results, this research work can be subsequently extended for the low‐grade housing applications in one end and at the same time, optimal waste utilization can also be possible to reduce the environmental waste.

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