Study on mechanical and tribo-performance of rice-husk filled glass–epoxy hybrid composites

This paper describes the development of multiphase hybrid composites consisting of epoxy reinforced with glass-fiber and filled with rice husk particulates. It further investigates the mechanical properties and erosion wear response of these composites and presents a comparison between the unfilled and filled samples. The erosion wear experiments are conducted as per design of experiment approach using Taguchi’s orthogonal arrays. The Taguchi approach enables us to determine optimal parameter settings that lead to minimization of the erosion rate. The results indicate that impact velocity, filler content, impingement angle and erodent size influence the wear rate significantly. The experimental results are in good agreement with values from the mathematical and artificial neural network (ANN) model. The objective of the present work is to fabricate a new class of epoxy based low cost hybrid composites reinforced with glass fiber and filled with rice husk powder in different weight proportions and to study the mechanical and erosion wear performance of these composites. This study reveals that hardness, tensile modulus, impact energy and erosion resistance of these new class hybrid composites are improving with filler addition while a steady decline in tensile and flexural properties are observed.

► Fabrication of a new class of glass–epoxy composites filled with rice husk.
► Improvement in hardness, tensile modulus and impact energy with filler addition.
► Taguchi design of experiment and ANN is successfully applied for erosion experiment.
► Improvements in erosion wear performance with filler addition.
► Erosion wear rate depends on impingement angle, filler content and impact velocity.