Mechanical and Tribological Behavior of Aluminum Honeycomb Core Reinforced with Polypropylene Composite

Abstract

Development of new Polymeric Matrix Composite are continuously increasing to meet out the industrial needs. In this paper new composite was developed by Aluminum Honeycomb Core structure was reinforced Polypropylene and it was characterized for mechanical and tribological properties. The characterization of mechanical properties like tensile strength, flexural strength, Impact strength and hardness of Aluminium honeycomb core reinforced with Polypropylene has been investigated over pure Polypropylene shows remarkable improvement in mechanical properties. Also in the Tribological characterization was done by using two-body abrasive wear test for the Aluminum Honeycomb Core structure reinforced Polypropylene composite. Abrasive wear experiments were conducted using a pin-on-disc wear tester under dry contact condition. Normal load, sliding velocity, sliding distance and abrasive paper grit size are considered as the design processes parameters and Coefficient Of Friction& Specific Wear Rate are considered as the responses. The design of experiments are based on L9 Orthogonal array used for this study. The optimum combination of process parameters for minimum Coefficient Of Friction are 30 N normal load, 1.046 m/sec sliding velocity, 450 m sliding distance and 320 grit size of abrasive paper and 30 N load, 1.569 m/sec sliding velocity, 450 m sliding distance and 400 grit size of abrasive gives minimum specific wear rate was obtained by using Analysis of Variance. Coefficient of friction is significantly influenced by the normal load, grit size. Specific wear rate is significantly influenced by sliding distance, normal load. Optical microscopy of worn surfaces revealed that wear mechanism is adhesive and abrasive, and there was a good bonding between Aluminium honeycomb core and Polypropylene