Improvement in Wear Resistance of PTFE by Addition of Fillers

Abstract

In this paper the study of polytetrafluroethylene, popularly known as PTFE and its composites under dry sliding condition have studied. Actually the conventional bearing materials leads to high wear rate as well as high coefficient of friction. PTFE is self lubricating material which has good chemical and dielectric properties with low wear rate. The PTFE material has high coefficient of friction, definitely it is less as compared to conventional material, so this problem can be minimised by addition of fillers. In market lot many PTFE composites are radially available but in this study, the effects of varying load, sliding distance, sliding velocity and filler content in PTFE are experimentally examined for 20% Glass fibre and 25% carbon. Due to addition of fillers it is found that original properties of PTFE are getting improved. A plan of experiment based on Taguchi technique, was performed to acquire data in controlled way. The experimental results are tabulated which shows that due to addition of fillers in virgin PTFE has improved its wear performance. It was found that, by varying the different parameter like Load, Velocity and Sliding distance the PTFE containing 20% Glass Fibre percentage have the better wear performance.