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Wear 268 (2010) 637–642

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Wear
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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.

1. Introduction istics of carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) have proven to


be less severe than those of glass-fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP)
Solid particle erosion [1–3] is one type of wear that causes local [14,15]. However, both of CFRP and GFRP are less erosion-resistant
damage combined with the progressive loss of original material than neat polymers. Since carbon fiber (CF) and glass fiber (GF) are
from a solid surface due to micromechanical interaction between inorganic fibers, in our study we expected to enhance the erosion
that surface and solid particles. Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) resistance of FRP by using organic high-polymer fibers.
composite materials have been widely used in various engineering Therefore, we focused on the 2 kinds of super fibers: ultra
fields because of their superior specific strength, lower density, and high strength polyethylene fiber (Dyneema® : DF) and poly (p-
higher corrosion resistance compared to monolithic metal alloys. phenylene-2, 6-benzobisoxazole) fiber (Zylon® : ZF) spun by the gel
It has been reported that various applications of FRP in equipment spinning method. The chemical structures of them are shown in
expose it to erosion wear conditions. Some examples include heli- Fig. 1. Dyneema is widely used as mooring rope, sails, and reinforc-
copter rotor blades, pump impeller blades, high-speed vehicles, ing material for helmets, due to its lower lightweight and higher
and aircraft operating in desert environments. The surface of these strength, modulus, impact strength, excellent flexibility and abra-
equipments will be impacted by the solid particles contained in the sion resistance compared to CF. Because its light stability is superior
air, and those particles will destroy the materials. to that of Aramid fiber, it was assumed that DF was feasible to be
Since the 1980s [4–6], the investigation of the erosion behav- used as reinforcement of composite materials, in accordance with
ior of materials has extended from metals to polymers and their the rule of mixture. Moreover, Dyneema-fiber-reinforced polymer
composites. Most experiments involving polymer composites have (DFRP) has a negative thermal expansion coefficient, a low frictional
been summarized by Harsha et al. [7]. In our laboratory, an exper- coefficient, and high thermal conductivity, making it applica-
iment and an evaluation method were developed to investigate ble for coil bobbins, and spacers. Until now, many papers have
the dry sand erosion behavior of fibers (Procon® , glass fiber) or been published concerning these characteristics of DFRP materi-
their aggregates [8], as well as erosion behaviors of the hybrid FRP als [16–19], however, few have focused on the erosion behavior of
materials [9]. Based on previous researched and related literatures, DFRP.
it is widely recognized that polymers and their composites have The present study attempted to develop new FRP materials with
poorer erosion resistance than metals and rubbers, and that poly- high strength and excellent particle erosion resistance by mak-
mer composites containing reinforcement fiber usually erode faster ing unidirectional-Dyneema fiber (UD-DFRP). This study tested the
than neat polymers [7,10–13]. In other words, reinforcement fiber tensile strength and investigated the effect of impact angles on the
can enhance the strength of polymer composites but reduces the erosion behavior of UD-DFRP, as compared to CFRP and unsatu-
erosion resistance of the polymer composites in general. rated polyester (UP) resin matrix. Zylon® -fiber-reinforced polymer
It has been conjectured that fiber reinforcement may improve or (ZFRP) was also tested to confirm the improvement effects of the
worsen resistance to erosion, depending on the type of fiber used. organic fibers. The damaged surfaces of the DFRPs and ZFRPs were
For unidirectional fiber-reinforced composites, the basic element analyzed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and the erosion
of complex composite structural material, the erosion character- wear mechanisms of the composites were investigated.

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

FRP was prepared as a unidirectional fiber sheet for reinforce-


ment, with unsaturated polyester resin as the matrix, which were
listed in Table 1. FRP specimens were assembled by hand lay-up
for tensile testing and by vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding
(Vartm) for erosion testing, respectively.
Since the fiber volume fraction (Vf ) by hand lay-up was lower
and difficult to control, the Vartm forming method was used to
enhance the Vf of FRPs and make them uniform for erosion testing
as much as possible. The density and the Vf of the FRPs are presented
in Table 2. Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the erosion tester.

2.2. Tensile tests

Tensile tests of the FRP composites were conducted by Auto


Graph (AG-20KND) with a load cell (SFL-20KNAG) manufactured by
Shimadzu Corporation. The strain gauge was attached to the tensile
specimen. The size of the tensile specimen was made conforming
to the “JIS K 7054” of Japanese Industrial Standards.
The tension specimens were mounted on the grips of the test-
ing machine, taking care to align the long axis of the specimen
and the grips with an imaginary line joining the points of attach-
ment of the grips to the machine. These specimens were loaded at
a cross-head speed of 5 mm/min for organic-FRPs and 2 mm/min
Fig. 3. Definition of impact angle and fiber orientation.
for inorganic-FRPs. A strain-collecting system digitally recorded
load/displacement and stress/strain with the use of wavelogger
software and a personal computer. of (90◦ , 75◦ , 60◦ , 45◦ , 30◦ and 15◦ ) under the fiber orientation of 90◦
as shown in Fig. 3. Testing was carried out for 20 min at an impact
2.3. Erosion wear tests velocity of 128 m/s. The solid particles used in the erosion tests
were angular alumina abrasives with an average size of 11.5 ␮m
A schematic diagram of the erosion testing system is presented (standard deviation of 21.5 ␮m) as shown in Fig. 4. The average
in Fig. 2. erodent feed rate of particles was adjusted to a mixture ratio of
The specimen was fixed on the metal stage. Solid particles were 1.8 g/min.
held in a hopper, and fed into the air stream by a microfeeder (ME-
1, Tsutsui Rikagaku Kikai Co. Ltd.) which can keep the constant feed
rate. The velocity of compressed air, created by an air compressor
(SulesanII, AS4PD-6, Kobe Steel, Ltd. Kobelco) was controlled by
adjusting the inlet pressure of the gun nozzle (NAB-11-6, Trucso
Nakayama Co. Ltd.). The high-velocity air stream containing solid
particles was shot from the nozzle of the air gun and was impacted
on the surface of the specimen, so as to cause erosion wear.
The distance between the air gun nozzle and the sample was
40 mm, and the inner diameter of the nozzle was 5.35 mm. Erosion
tests were performed by changing the angle between the air flow
and the horizontal axis of the test specimen (˛), at different values

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.

Forming method Inorganic type Organic high-polymer type

CFRP GFRP DFRP ZFRP

Hand lay-up Vf (%) 30 44 28 14

Vartm Density (g/m3 ) 1.374 – 0.994 0.951


Vf (%) 49 – 46 40

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.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Tensile strength of FRPs

As a representation of the tensile results, an s–s curve of CFRP


and one of DFRP are plotted in Fig. 5.
The average experiment results of tensile strength ( t ) and elas-
tic modulus (E) of four times for the four kinds of FRP composite are
presented in Table 3. Due to the differences of fiber contents among
the four kinds of FRP, the tensile strength and elastic modulus of
CFRP, ZFRP and GFRP were converted to the same fiber content of
28% in terms of the DFRP (bold type in Table 3) in order to compare
Fig. 7. The comparison of the elastic modulus of four kinds of FRP at Vf of 28%.
these values. Both of them are presented in Figs. 6 and 7.
The compared values in bold type are calculated following the
Vf at 28%, in accordance with the DFRP. modulus (indicated by ) in Fig. 8. It was obvious that the spe-
As shown in Fig. 6, with a fiber content of 28%, it is obviously that cific tensile strength and the specific elastic modulus of DFRP were
although tensile strength of DFRP was lightly greater than GFRP and more than three times larger than those of GFRP, which were not
much lower than CFRP, they were still of the same order. ZFRP had markedly different from those of CFRP. Both the specific tensile
the highest tensile strength. A similar tendency of elastic modulus strength and the specific elastic modulus of organic FRPs were
was observed for all four kinds of FRP. higher than those of the inorganic FRPs. It was confirmed that the
In order to compare the mechanical properties of various rein- mechanical properties of the DFRP were equivalent to or better than
forcement fibers, the longitudinal axes of Figs. 6 and 7 were changed those of the widely used CFRP and GFRP. Therefore, it is feasible to
to specific tensile strength (indicated by 䊉) and specific elastic substitute DFRP for GFRP and CFRP as a stronger structural material.

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%)

Properties  t (MPa) E (GPa)  t (MPa) E (GPa)  t (MPa) E (GPa)  t (MPa) E (GPa)

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,

Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and


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