Volumen II - SAM

morphology observed by TOM. Bright BES implies that fracture surface is covered with a high atomic
weight element. Elemental analysis reveals that there is a high content of both Mo and S and low content of
C in surface (Figure 8). We can therefore state that MoS2 deteriorated mechanical and fracture behavior of
HMW-HDPE because it gave place to a weak phase that acts as a preferential path for cracks.
This last analysis is also useful to explain the optimum content of MoS2 for minimum wear rate. It can be
deduced that large amounts of filler results in a detriment of wear resistance because of the worst mechanical
properties which lead to the occurrence of micro-cracking wear mechanism.
Figure 6. SEM of fracture surfaces.
Figure 7. TOM picture of a running crack trough composite with PE/10.
Figure 8. BES+EPMA elemental analysis of fracture surface of PE/10 composite.
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