The paper presents the results of investigations on the glass fiber reinforced composite for the floor panels with quartz powder additions of different percentages in terms of wear resistance, friction coefficient, hardness, and strength. The wear resistance was assessed using the specific wear work parameter determined by the novel tribotester with friction band. It was found that an increase in quartz powder addition to the tested polymer composite does not enhance its mechanical increasingly properties. From the wear tests it can be concluded that only the composite with four layers of glass fibers and 6 wt.% of the quartz powder exhibited improvement of the wear resistance, but its shear strength was lower than that of the two layer specimens with similar powder proportions. On the other hand, the highest friction coefficient's, which is microhardness HV05, shear strength and impact strength were attained for the composite with two layers of glass fibers and 3 wt.% of the quartz powder. Among four layer samples, very close results were obtained for the samples with 10% of powder and insignificantly lower strength were observed for the samples with no powder added. The results revealed that there is no clear trend for the effect of silica filler percentage on the composite performance, which indicates the need for individual purpose-dependent decision making in the design of the glass fiber reinforced composites with quartz powder filler.
Keywords: glass fiber reinforcement; polymer composite; quartz powder; resin; silica filler; tribotester; wear.