Tribological evaluation of marble dust filled polyester composites using an integrated fuzzy logic and response surface method approach

Abstract

Friction and wear are identified as huge problems for the engineering industries, and these are being studied extensively in the 21st century with an intension to reduce the wear losses by developing newer and cheaper tribo-materials. Based on this, the current research is based on a novel idea of developing polyester-based wear resistant composites (Cs) filled with a low-cost solid industrial waste produced during the processing of marble rocks. Polyester Cs consisting of three different proportions (0, 16 and 32 wt%) of waste marble dusts (MD) are fabricated and their dry-sliding wear response is evaluated following L30 model of response surface method (RSM) as per ASTM G99-05. The analysis of test result revealed that the Cs wear rate (WR) is affected significantly by the factors like filler content (FC) and sliding velocity (SV) but marginal effect of normal load (NL) and sliding distance (SD) is noticed. Micrographs of the damaged Cs surfaces are studied using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to get an insight in to the wear mechanism. Two models working on RSM and fuzzy logic (FL) are proposed to determine the effects of significant control factors on the WR more precisely. This research opens up a new arena for rewarding utilization of waste MD in making of Cs with immense potential for industry use such as in tribological applications. Copyright (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.