Mechanical and tribological properties of short glass fiber and short carbon fiber reinforced polyethersulfone composites: A comparative study

The polyethersulfone (PES) composites incorporated with short carbon fibers (SCFs) and short glass fibers (SGFs) were manufactured, and their mechanical and tribological properties were comparatively investigated. The tensile and flexural strengths of SCF/PES composites increase monotonically with increasing the SCF content while those of the SGF/PES composites initially increase dramatically but the strengths approaches a plateau when the SGF content is over 5 vol%. The Young's and flexural moduli of both SGF/PES and SCF/PES composites exhibit a monotonic increase behavior with increasing the fiber content and achieve the maximum improvements of 128.7%, 227.2%, 165% and 234% with the introduction of 30 vol% short fibers. The addition of SGFs results in a monotonic increase of the friction coefficient and a maximum increase of 48.8% is achieved with 30 vol% SGFs. By contrary, the friction coefficient of SCF/PES composites decreases with the addition of SCFs and a maximum drop of 29.8% compared with that of pure PES is reached with the addition of 20 vol% SCFs. The wear resistance of PES composite is greatly improved by the incorporation of either SGFs or SCFs. The specific wear rates of the PES composites decrease significantly with the addition of short fibers, and the maximum reduction of 71.4% and 95.7% is achieved with the addition of 20 vol% short fibers. When cost is primary consideration while strength, modulus and tribological performance are secondary considerations for end users, SGFs are superior over SCFs; otherwise; SCFs are superior over SGFs.