A review of the tribological performance on polymers filled with inorganic particulate fillers

There are many technical applications in which friction and wear are critical issue. Polymers are often filledwith particulate materials to enhance the tribological behaviour and a physical and mechanical property aswell. The composites made with such fillers are amenable to common molding processes unlike fiberreinforced composites which makes them economically. A lot of studies on the tribological behaviour offilled polymers have been made. The representative results from such studies are presented in this paper.New developments are still under the way to explore other fields of applications for these materials and tomodify their properties for more extreme loading and environmental temperature conditions. Inorganicparticles are well known to enhance the mechanical properties of polymers, which has been extensivelyinvestigated in the past. It has been found that particle size plays an important role to improve somemechanical properties such as toughness and stiffness. The mechanism of the improvement in wearbehaviour is discussed by referring to the transfer film characteristics such as texture, uniformity andthickness as well as bonding to the counterface surface