Experimental investigations and statistical modeling of specific wear and coefficient of friction in a novel carbon fiber reinforced composite

In the present work, experimental investigations were performed to study the effect of various machine parameters like sliding velocity (S_v), sliding distance (S_d), and load (L), on specific wear (W_s) and coefficient of friction (COF). The experiments were performed on a novel carbon fiber reinforced composite consisting of fishbone powder as filler. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to develop the statistical models to predict the specific wear rate and coefficient of friction (µ) of the developed composite. A set of 20 experiments were designed according to the central composite design technique. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out at a confidence interval of 95% to determine the parameters that significantly affect (p<0.05) the output responses. It was also found that among the various parameters, the influence of S_d was most significant (33.4%) on W_s followed by S_v (20.3%) and L (17.9%). For COF, the percentage contribution of S_v was maximum i.e. 64%, followed by S_d (17.8%) and L (7.8%).