Experimental Investigations on Tribological Behaviour of Alumina Added Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) Composites

Composite materials are multifunctional in nature, which can be custom-made based on the nature of the applications. The challenge of composite materials lie on complementing the properties of one another i.e. materials which go in the making of composites strengthen each other by inhibiting their weaknesses. Polymers are one of the widely used materials which serve a wide spectrum of engineering needs. In the present work, the tribological behaviour of a composite containing Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and traces of Alumina is experimentally investigated. Alumina is added to ABS in various percentages such as 1%, and 3% by weight in order to improve the wear resistance of the polymer. Central Composite Design was used to design the experiments and a standard Pin-On-Disk apparatus was used to conduct the experiments. It is observed from the test results that the addition of alumina significantly enhances the wear behavior of the polymer. However, adding more percentage of alumina has led to adverse effect on wear resistance of polymer materials. Abrasive wear mechanism is found to be predominant in the case of alumina added composite materials. It is also found that 1% alumina added composite exhibits excellent wear properties compared to other materials.