Tribological Behavior of ABS/TiO2 Polymer Composite Using Taguchi Statistical Analysis

The friction and wear properties of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) filled with micro-meter sized titanium di-oxide (TiO2) composites are investigated for varying filler content, normal load and sliding speed with three levels of each parameter. The experiments are conducted on multi-tribotester (block-on-roller configuration) using L27 orthogonal array (OA) design of experiments. Taguchi based statistical analysis is performed for coefficient of friction (COF) and specific wear rate to find optimal condition for the process. The optimal combination of parameter for COF is found at 10 wt% filler content, 35 N normal load and speed of 120 rpm and for specific wear rate it is found at 15 wt% filler content, 35 N load and 120 rpm speed. From analysis of variance (ANOVA) it is seen that filler content has the significant effect on COF followed by normal load and for specific wear rate, normal load has the significant effect followed by sliding speed. Further, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images for worn surfaces of polymer composite are investigated to support the optimized result. Finally, a confirmation test is also carried out to validate the optimized results and found it is increased about 16% and 2.76% from initial to optimum conditions for friction coefficient and wear rate, respectively.