Wear Failures of Reinforced Polymers

Reinforced polymers (RPs) are widely used in many structural, industrial, automotive, and engineering applications due to their eco-friendly nature and potentials to manipulate their properties. One of the most important application of RPs, is in tribo-systems where wear resistance is the main demanded criteria. The dominated lubrication mechanism of polymers is elasto-hydrodynamic regime, which is associated with elastic deformation of coupled surfaces, in particular where both bearing surfaces are polymers. Besides, applying polymers in tribo-systems, encourages the elimination or reduction in applying external lubrication fluids due to self-lubricity characteristic of polymers. Tribological performance of RPs can be improved with addition of reinforcement in form of particle, fiber or mix of both. The distribution of filler in terms of shape, size, type, volume fraction and fiber orientation, relative to sliding direction in case of fiber reinforced polymers, plays an important role to determine the tribological performance of RPs. In addition, operating conditions such as load, speed, angle of penetration or attack angle, as well as generated temperature at surfaces interface, are the significant contributors to govern the wear behavior of sliding pairs. Abrasive and adhesive wear are the most common scenarios that take place for RPs in tribo-systems. Therefore, this chapter is devoted to address the technical synthesis referring to tribological behavior of RPs to get insight of contribution and interaction of influential parameters on wear behavior of polymers.”