The Influence of Impact Angle on Erosion Behavior of PEEK/Ni Foam Co-continuous Composite

Polyether-ether-ether -ketone (PEEK)/Nickel co-continuous composites (“PEEK-Ni” for short) is a type of new structure composites. This material is composed of PEEK polymer with high specific strength (matrix phase) and nickel foam with high toughness (reinforcement phase), which has the characteristics of two-phase interconnection, topological continuity and isotropy. Hot pressing technology was used to obtain the PEEK-Ni by infiltrated the melt PEEK polymer into the nickel foam of 100 PPI (pores per inch). The slurry erosion behavior of pure PEEK resin, pure nickel and PEEK-Ni at 5 different impact angles (30°, 45°, 60°, 75° and 90°) was investigated by slurry jet erosion test apparatus. The slurry erosion process with different impact angles was modeled and simulated by using ANSYS Fluent finite element simulation software, and the boundary conditions were set. The results showed that, with the increase of impact angle, the damage area changed from crescent-shaped to U-shaped, and finally it develop into the annular damage area around the stagnation point. The simulation results agreed well with the slurry erosion experiment. Due to the shielding effect and synergistic effect of nickel foam, PEEK-Ni has exhibited lower erosion damage than pure PEEK, and the slurry erosion damage of PEEK-Ni was not sensitive to the impact angle.