Publication

Abstract : Analysis of lubricated sliding of silicon (Si) doped amorphous carbon (a-C) film or Si:a-C and carbon fiber reinforced poly-ether-ether-ketone (CFRPEEK) is seldom performed. Further, there are no reports on the temperature rise in these materials during wear test. To address this, in the present work, these materials were subjected to lubricated sliding pertaining to implant condition to realise metal-on-polymer acetabular articulation. The temperature rise in the material was obtained by employing thermocouple in the CFRPEEK counterbody. The experiments were performed with L27 full factorial design followed by ranking the combination of wear parameters using fuzzy-CODAS based multi-criteria-decision-making (MCDM) approach. The film demonstrated dense CrN and SiC microstructure with good surface quality. The optical micrograph of CFRPEEK sample showed uniform dispersion of the carbon fibres. The robustness of the model was corroborated using sensitivity analysis. The worn surface morphology clearly showed limited wear with the conditions pertaining to the best alternative with smoothening effect and minor grooves on the worn surface whereas the worn surface wear conditions related to the worst alternative showed greater delamination of both the Si:a-C film and CFRPEEK counterbody with severe material transfer and adhesion.