Evaluation and study of PBI reinforced with HDPE on abrasive wear using ANOVA and CODAS approach for protective shell applications

Industrial applications often employ high density polyethylene (HDPE) as a bearing material due to its great wear resistance and low friction characteristics. Polybenzimidazole (PBI) reinforced HDPE composites are utilised to increase physical qualities in protective shells of HDPE oil and gas pipes. The melt intercalation method by twin screw extruder was used to reinforce the PBI particulates in HDPE in different weight percentages (1 wt%, 3 wt%, and 5 wt%) to fabricate HDPE/PBI composites. The two-body abrasive wear behaviour (specific wear rate) was investigated at various input parameters such as applied load (10 N, 15 N, 20 N , 25 N) and sliding distance (100 m, 150 m, 200 m , 250 m) at 0.5 m/s sliding velocity under 320 grit SiC paper. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to identify the most important components that contribute to abrasive wear. In wear resistance, the 5 wt% PBI reinforcement showed the most dominance, and it was relied on a lower melt flow index to achieve this. The increase in sliding distance to 250 m and load to 25 N has increased the specific wear rate (SWR). Combinative distance based assessment (CODAS) system was used to determine the reliabilities of parameter using a ranking system. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis is used to investigate worn surface morphology. Various machine learning approaches were employed to analyse the relationship between variables and the effect of parameters on wear. The multilayer perceptron model has the greatest correlation coefficient and the lowest root mean square error.