A study on the potential of sugarcane fibers/polyester composite for tribological applications

In conclusion, glass fibres have negative impact on the formation of polymer film and responsible for the observed discontinuous (ruptured) film for C-GRP composite. In other words, the back transfer polymer film formed at the interface managed to survive in the case of using SCF but in the case of GF, the effect of impact-type repeated loading caused by hard asperities and broken particles of glass fibre unstable the formation of such protective layers together with increased debonding and fractured fibre resulted in higher wear rate of C-GRP composite. Finally, microscopic observation evidenced that the SCF has the ability to have a fairly good bonding with the polyester matrix. This in turn made the separation of fibre from the composite more difficult and hence contributed to improvement of wear resistance for C-SCRP composite compared to C-GRP composite. In contrary, the bonding between GFs and the matrix for C-GRP composite was not that strong and the fibres were easily debonding.