Abstract: Polymer and polymer composites have been increasingly used in various industrial applications such as aerospace automotive and chemical industries. This material provides high strength/weight ratio. In this work attention is given to investigate the effect of surface texturing on tribological properties of polymer composite material considering various conditions so as to observe the comparative friction and wear behavior of polymer composite with surface texturing on mating surface under varying surface texture density, surface texture depth, material and lubrication by using a pin on disc type wear tester at NTP. Experimental work is carried out by loads of 183.21 N at sliding velocity 0.12 m/s keeping this parameter constant. The test is carried out for material polyoxymethylene and its composite containing like glass fiber in dry and wet condition. In this work AISI 304 stainless steel two discs are used. One disc has plane surface on one side and other side having surface texturing and other disc has surface textured pattern on both sides. This test is carried out at ambient condition using a pin on disc Tribometer (TR-20LE).The result is tabulated and graphs are plotted for each material testing. From these graphs the effect of dimple depth and density at dry and wet sliding condition on coefficient of friction and specific wear rate of the material is studied. So for dry condition the coefficient of friction and wear of the material is higher than wet condition. Reduction is seen in wear rate and coefficient of friction for wet condition. As Dimple depth increase there is decrease in C.O.F and wear and Specific wear rate increases at dry sliding condition. The lowest coefficient of friction and wear obtained for POM + 30% G.F. from the 30% surface texturing density and Dimple depth is 50 micron at wet condition. SEM image shows that the wear of Polyoxymethylene + 30% G.F. surface is low as compared with other composite surface in wet lubricating conditions.

Keywords: Composite material, Tribometer, Dimple depth, Dimple density, SEM analysis.