A fuzzy logic approach for investigating the tribological behavior of polymer composite

Abstract

The application spectrum of natural fiber reinforced polymer composites has been increasing tremendously because of enhanced tribologicalbehavior. The present study investigates the wear and coefficient of friction of castor oil fiber reinforced composites for developing as new tribo-material. Composites with 40 vol.% with short fiber length of 5mm were fabricated by hand lay-up method. The tribology tests were performed with pin on disc tribometer at normal loads (15N, 30N & 45N) and sliding distances (1000m, 2000m & 3000m). A fuzzy logic model has been developed to predict and analyze the wear and friction characteristics at unknown test cases. Each input variable was divided into three linguistic variables and each output variable was divided into five linguistic variables. A triangular membership function was used for defining all the variables. The capabilities of fuzzy logic model were tested by confirmatory experiments. The model predicted the wear results with an error of 3.12% and coefficient of friction by 2.19%.