Parametric appraisal of erosion behaviour of organo-modified montmorillonite-filled epoxy hybrid composites by Taguchi approach

In the present work, the influence of organo-modified montmorillonite loading on the solid particle erosion of carbon fabric-reinforced epoxy composites was investigated. The development of a multi-component composite system consisting of thermoset epoxy resin reinforced with carbon fabric and organo-modified montmorillonite nanoparticles, the erosion behaviour was studied for various erodent size, impact velocity, loading of organo-modified montmorillonite and for different impingement angles. For this purpose, erosion test rig and the design of experiments approach utilizing Taguchi’s orthogonal arrays were used. Of all the above factors, the erodent size has the greatest effect on the reduction in the erosion wear rate. The erosion wear rate variation was found to be in the range of 1.33 × 10 ⁻⁴ –48.02 × 10 ⁻⁴ g/g. The lowest erosion wear rate was found in the case of unfilled carbon fabric-reinforced epoxy composite under erodent size of 600 µm, impact velocity of 30 m/s and erodent time of 1 min. Further, the results showed strong dependence of the erosive wear on the erodent size. The organo-modified montmorillonite filled carbon fabric-reinforced epoxy composite showed brittle erosion behaviour with maximum weight loss at 75° impingement angle. Analysis of variance was performed on the measured data and signal to noise ratios were found. The morphology of eroded surfaces was examined using scanning electron microscopy and damage mechanisms were discussed.