Application of Taguchi – PCA/GRA Method to Optimize the Wear Behaviour of Polyester/Carbon Fibre Composites

Abstract

Fibre-reinforced polymer composites have begun to replace the conventional monolithic materials in the recent years as a result of better specific strength and enhanced characteristics. The present work has put forward an attempt to study the dry-sliding wear behaviour of CFRP composites followed by implementation of Taguchi-GRA combinatorial approach for the two output responses namely, wear and frictional force. Load (L), sliding distance (D), sliding velocity (S), and percent of fibre reinforcement (R) are considered as input conditions and the experiments were planned using design of experiments. In addition, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has taken into consideration for the weights calculation in GRA. An elaborate study on the implementation these methodologies on the combined behaviour of wear and frictional force has been presented. Furthermore, ANOVA data is analysed, it appears that both the load (L) and the percent reinforcement (R) has greater effect towards the wear behaviour. A detailed discussion on wear mechanism has also been presented with a support of SEM morphology.