The aim of this research is to investigate the tribological behaviour of short carbon fibre (SCF) reinforced polylactic acid (PLA)/acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) matrix composites using Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM). The major goal is to provide a theoretical foundation and investigate the applicability of SCFs (20 wt.%) for printing a high-quality PLA/ABS com-posites structure with superior abrasion resistance.
The wear specimen was manufactured using FDM technology. The specimen was produced out of pristine PLA, pristine ABS and SCF reinforced PLA/ABS composites. These composites were tested for multi-pass two-body and three-body abrasive wear behaviour utilising a special purpose abrasion test rig and a rubber-wheel abrasion test rig respectively.
The specific wear rate is primarily controlled by the applied normal load and the abrading distance. Comparing the wear performance of all composites under various loads reveals that two-body abrasive wear (multi-pass condition) is 2 to 2.4 times larger than three-body abrasive wear. Attempts have been made to connect wear performance with certain mechanical parameters. The wear mechanism associated with different experimental conditions was also studied using scanning electron microscope (SEM).