Tribological behaviour of the composite PEEK-CF30 at dry sliding against steel using statistical techniques

PEEK is a semi-crystalline polymer. Due to the excellent wear and frictional behaviour this material is widely regarded as the highest performance thermoplastic material currently available. In this work statistical techniques were used to study the effects of pv factor, temperature and sliding distance on the dry sliding tribological behaviour of 30 wt% carbon-fibre-reinforced polyetheretherketone composite (PEEK-CF30). A plan of experiments, based on the combined techniques using orthogonal arrays and ANOVA, was performed on a pin-on-disc machine PLINT TE67HT®. The obtained results show that friction coefficient was highly influenced by sliding distance factor and, in a smaller degree, by the pv factor. The weight loss was by influenced by the temperature factor and by sliding distance.