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Letter
Fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials with high specific strength and excellent solid particle erosion resistance
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Keywords: It has been reported that reinforcement fiber such as carbon fiber (CF) and glass fiber (GF) can enhance the
Solid particle strength of polymer composites, but reduce the particle erosion resistance of the polymer composites.
Tensile strength In our study, organic high-polymer fibers (Dyneema® and Zylon® ) were used as reinforcement to make
Excellent erosion resistance
fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs). Tensile tests and particle erosion wear tests under various impact angles
DFRP
were carried out for comparison with carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP), glass-fiber-reinforced
ZFRP
CFRP polymer (GFRP), and unsaturated polyester (UP) resin. The damaged surfaces of the Dyneema-fiber-
reinforced polymer (DFRP) and Zylon-fiber-reinforced polymer (ZFRP) were analyzed with a scanning
electron microscope, and the erosion wear mechanisms of the composites were discussed. It was con-
cluded that it was feasible to develop the FRP materials with low density, high strength, and excellent
particle erosion resistance.
© 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
0043-1648/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.wear.2009.08.038
638 Letter / Wear 268 (2010) 637–642
Table 1
The specification of materials.
Carbon fiber T-300B 6K, 1.77 g/cm3 , Mitsubishi Rayon Co., Ltd.
Glass fiber 454 g/m2 , 2.54 g/cm3 , Unitika Co., Ltd.
Dyneema® fiber SK60, 0.97 g/cm3 , 1320dtex, Toyobo Co., Ltd.
Zylon® fiber AS, 1.54 g/cm3 , 1110dtex, Toyobo Co., Ltd.
Matrix Unsaturated polyester resin 158BQTN, 1.22 g/cm3 ,
Showa Highpolymer Co., Ltd.
2. Experimental details
2.1. Materials
Fig. 1. The chemical structure of Dyneema® and Zylon® . Fig. 4. SEM micrograph of impacting particles.
Letter / Wear 268 (2010) 637–642 639
Table 2
The paramenters of FRPs.
Fig. 6. The comparison of the tensile strength of four kinds of FRP at Vf of 28%.
Fig. 5. The s–s curves of the CFRP and DFRP.
Weight loss (WL ) of before and after the erosion testing was
measured by a precision balance, in order to evaluate the erosion
damage of the FRP materials.
Table 3
The data of the t and E of four kinds of FRP.
Materials CFRP (Vf : 30%) DFRP (Vf : 28%) ZFRP (Vf : 14%) GFRP (Vf : 44%)
Experimental results Aver. 985.0 52.48 559.3 27.54 528.1 29.39 607.4 27.68
Stde. 88.6 8.47 73.2 2.38 22.0 1.91 33.2 2.02
Compare values Aver. 919.3 48.98 559.3 27.54 1056 58.78 386.5 17.61
Stde. 71.8 7.91 73.2 2.38 44.0 3.82 15.8 1.29
640 Letter / Wear 268 (2010) 637–642
Fig. 8. Comparison of specific tensile strength and specific elastic modulus of four
kinds of FRP.
Fig. 9. Comparison of the erosion rate of volumetric loss among the four kinds of
materials.
3.2. Erosion resistance
Among numerous factors influencing the erosion wear of mate- where WL is the weight loss of the specimen, WS is the total weight
rials, the most important are impact velocity; impact angle of the of the impact particles in 20 min, and is the density of the testing
particles; and size, shape and hardness of the particles. In this study, material.
only the effect of the impact angles was examined. Fig. 9 plots the relationship between the erosion rate of volu-
In order to quantify the extent of the damage, the erosion rate metric loss and the impact angles from 15◦ to 90◦ for four kinds
of weight loss (ω) is usually expressed as the weight of mate- of materials. The broken curves were computed by the two-stage
rial removed by unit weight of impacting particles. However, in least-squares method, illustrating the obvious influence of impact
comparing the erosion of various types of materials, it is more angles on erosion.
meaningful to use the erosion rate of the volumetric loss (), As shown in Fig. 9, the higher the erosion rate, the worse erosion
because the problem is usually manifested by modification of the resistance of the testing materials. The erosion resistance of the
geometric profile rather than by weight loss. Thus, the erosion rate CFRP was much larger than that of the other three kinds of material.
of the volumetric loss is defined by the following equation: If the erosion rate of GFRP was drawn in this figure, it would be
assumed to be higher than the curve of CFRP, once again confirming
ω WL (g) that the erosion resistance of CFRP and GFRP was not as great as that
= = (1)
WS (g) × of the neat matrix.
Fig. 10. Scanning electron micrograph of DFRP at impact angle of 30◦ , 45◦ , 90◦ .
Letter / Wear 268 (2010) 637–642 641
Fig. 11. Scanning electron micrograph of ZFRP at impact angle of 30◦ , 45◦ , 90◦ .
The maximum erosion rate of the CFRP was at the impact angle higher than that of DF, the fracture elongation along the fiber orien-
of 60◦ , exhibiting a marked difference from that of DFRP, ZFRP tation of DF was above 3% and that of CF was about 1.5%, indicating
and the matrix. However, the similarity in the tendency of the that the ductility of DF was much greater than that of CF. As indi-
other three curves was obvious. The maximum erosion rates for cated in Fig. 5, the absorbed energy in a fracture of DFRP was higher
these three kinds of organic materials approached the impact angle as compared with the CFRP. Moreover, the ductile damage observed
between 30◦ and 45◦ . Furthermore, the erosion rates of matrix for around DFRP indicated that the micro-impact resistance of DFRP
all impact angles were much higher than DFRP and ZFRP. The ero- was much stronger than the CFRP, as the same considers for the
sion curve of ZFRP resembled that of FRP very much, and both of ZFRP. The ductility on the cross-section orientation of the fiber was
them exhibited excellent erosion resistance as compared to the not referred to in this study, therefore, it is necessary to discuss in
CFRP. It is considered to be the attribution of the type of the rein- future due to the anisotropy of fibers.
forced fiber used. The micrographs of damaged surface features in ZFRPs eroded
The excellent erosion resistance of both ZFRP and DFRP, revealed at impact angles of 30◦ , 45◦ and 90◦ are shown in Fig. 11. It showed
that the erosion resistance of FRP materials can be improved by both the initial stages of resin removal that expose the fibers to
reinforcement fibers with characteristics like Dyneema and Zylon, breakage and latter stages of fiber breakage but without subse-
which are organic high-polymer fibers. quent fiber removal largely. And that ZFRPs exhibited a ductile-type
In addition, we compared the erosion resistances of DFRP and erosion behavior more than brittle-type at the all impact angles,
ZFRP with those of Chauhan et al. [20] at impact angle of 90◦ , and especially at the impact angle of 45◦ . In the case of 30◦ and 90◦ , they
they were still lower than that of 13/4 steel. Therefore, it is con- showed trend of the large degree of fibrillation which occurred in
sidered that the erosion resistance of organic high-polymer fibers the Zylon fibers during the erosion impacting. Thereby, the ZFRPs
reinforced polymer composite materials should be lower than met- can absorb significantly more impacting energy than that at impact
als or their metallic composites under the same erosion conditions. angle of 45◦ , at which results in the maximal erosion loss occurring.
Fig. 12 presents a SEM microphotograph of the Dyneema fiber
without erosion tests. Several parallel lined cracks were observed
3.3. SEM of the damaged surface
along the direction almost perpendicular to the fiber axis on the
fiber surface. It was possible to improve the interface link strength
To verify the erosion mechanisms of organic high-polymer fiber-
between the fiber and the matrix by those cracks. It was assumed
reinforced materials, damaged surfaces of the DFRPs and ZFRPs
were observed by scanning electron microscopy.
Fig. 10 shows the SEM micrographs of surface features in DFRPs
eroded at impact angles of 30◦ , 45◦ and 90◦ . Not only at the lower
but also at the higher impact angles, both the ductile damage and
the brittle cracks were viewed simultaneously. It was indicated that
damage processes of DFRP was different from the CFRP and GFRP.
In the case of the impact angle of 30◦ and 90◦ (b) as shown in
Fig. 10, the characteristics of the ductile material were apparent. In
particular, at 90◦ , the fiber damage resulting from repetitive micro-
ploughing was clearly observed, and the fiber fraction slowly wore
into a squamous shape. The experimental erosion rate of DFRP at
90◦ was lower than that at 30◦ , so it is assumed that the ductile
damage was maintained at the impact angle of 90◦ , and that it could
prevent the fiber fractions from being removed from the materials.
In the case of the impact angle of 45◦ , the cracks seemed to
extend quickly, causing the fiber bunch to fracture together. There-
fore, the removed fiber fragments were much larger than with other
angles.
On the other hand, according to the properties supplied by the
fiber manufacturer, although the tensile strength of CF was slightly Fig. 12. SEM micrograph of Dyneema fiber.
642 Letter / Wear 268 (2010) 637–642
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Acknowledgements
Danna Qian a,∗
This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Global COE Pro-
Limin Bao b
gram by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and
Masayuki Takatera b
Technology.
Kiyoshi Kemmochi b
Dyneema® and Zylon® are registered trademarks of TOYOBO,
Atsuhiko Yamanaka c
and supplied by TOYOBO in Japan. a Department of Bioscience and Textile Technology,