The Performance of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) Under Abrasive Condition

In many fields of industry, abrasion wear is one of dominant wear mechanism that reduces service life of a material. In searching for sustainability material, usage of glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) has become popular not only in building material, automobile and also in replacing the usage of steel on offshore deck. Therefore, this paper intended to discuss in depth the performance of glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) under abrasive condition. The first objective of this project is to perform abrasive resistance test on GFRP materials which is polyester, vinyl ester and phenolic by using abrasion testing machine according to American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) G65 standard. ASTM G65 is a standard test method for measuring abrasion using the dry sand and rubber wheel apparatus which is most suitable standard to be used. The second objective is to identify the performance of GFRP materials under abrasive condition and finally to find out which resins has most abrasive resistance. These samples will be classified into three different conditions which are the molded normal condition (control samples) ,molded 2 months aging condition (immerse into salt water and temperature of 60ºC) and pultruded normal condition. The methodology of the study is described in a flow chart which shows steps of data collection, data analysis, ranking of the resins and the conclusion. As the testing has been done, it can be seen the result of abrasive resistivity, surface profile each type of resins as each resins has different hardness. The project outcome may actually facilitate the study on GFRP materials and help in publishing standard code for the usage of GFRP.