Increasing wear resistance of UHMWPE by mechanical activation and chemical modification combined with addition of nanofibers

Abstract

Mechanical activation technique is discussed as a way for increasing physical-mechanical properties of UHMWPE. It is shown that physical mechanical properties of hot-pressed specimens of UHMWPE without any filler reach the maximum value at mechanical activation time of 20 minutes, with rather low wear intensity at steady-state wearing stage. Addition of 10 wt.% of HDPE-g-SMA results in an increment of the wear resistance that might be caused by cross linking of both components (UHMWPE and HDPE-g-SMA) during sintering. Addition of carbon nanofibers (CNF) into UHMWPE in range of 0.1–0.5 wt.% ensures improvement of physical–mechanical and tribotechnical properties of the hot-sintered specimens. It is shown that CNF volume fraction of 0.1–0.5 wt.% provides the lowest wear rate for the specimens during the “block-on-ring” test