Thermo-mechanical and Erosion Wear Peculiarity of Hybrid Composites Filled with Micro and Nano Silicon Dioxide Fillers – A Comparative Study

This article presents the findings on thermo-mechanical and erosion wear characteristics of micro silicon dioxide (SiO2) fillers filled woven glass fiber based vinyl ester hybrid composites (MWGVHCs) as well as nano SiO2 filled woven glass fiber-vinyl ester hybrid composites (NWGVHCs). Wovenglass-vinyl ester based hybrid composites are developed, filled with 5wt.% and 10wt.% of micro and nano SiO2 fillers, respectively. Performance of filler filled composites is compared with the filler less composites. Thermo-mechanical analysis of hybrid composites is done as per ASTM standards. Angles of impact (30°, 45°, 60°, 75° and 90o), impact velocities (30, 55 and 80 m/s) and erodent size of 300, 450 and 600 µm is used for erosion wear test of fabricated composites. Taguchi statistical method is employed for design of experiments to optimize the process parameters. Findings reveal that hybrid composites filled with 10wt% of nano SiO2 filler performed best amongst all the in-class composites. In order to optimize the performance of fabricated composites VIKOR method is also implemented.