Wear analysis of polyamide based on a statistical approach

Polymers are increasingly used for numerous tribological applications. Abrasive wear behaviours of cast polyamides of Kestoil (KT) and Kestamid (KS) were investigated using a Taguchi approach with combination effect of load, speed, distance and grit size. An orthogonal array and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were applied to investigate the influence of process parameters on weight loss. The results indicated that SNR decreased with increasing load and sliding distance while increased with increasing grit size considerably and sliding speed a slightly, but KT showed lower weight loss than that of KS under same conditions. ANOVA indicated that abrasive size and sliding distance had great effects on the weight losses, which were at 49.78%, 13.27% for KT samples and 29.22% and 11.71% for KS samples, respectively. Furthermore, a confidence interval (CI) for predicted mean on confirmation run for KT and KS samples was found about ±5.02, ±3.70 at 95% confidence level, respectively.