Production of aluminium based SiC-reinforced composite materials and investigation of their wear properties

In the present work, Al alloy (Al-2011) based Metal Matrix Composites(MMC?s) reinforced with varying size and volume fraction of SiC particles havebeen produced by using a vortex method and subsequently applied pressure.The density measurements showed that the samples contained little porosity,and the amount of porosity in the composites increased with increasing volumefraction and decreasing size of particles. Scanning electron microscopic (SEM)observation of the microstructures revealed that the dispersion of the coarsersizes of particles was more uniform, while finer particles led to agglomeration ofthe particles and porosity. In addition, wear of the alloy and the composites hasbeen investigated using a pin-on-disc type ofwear machine both abrasive andpin-on-ring made of bear steel (H13) under dry sliding. In this study, the effectof SiC particle content, particle size, and load on the wear properties of thecomposites were systematically investigated. It was found that the wearresistance of the composites was more higher than that of Al alloy for both weartests, and increased with increasing SiC particle content and size. The wearrates of all samples increased with increasing loads at all tests. However there isa load limit at the wear of composites. The load limitation can changeddepending on the particule content, and particle size. When this load limit wasover 45 N, some increases of wear rate of the samples occured especially forvihigher volume fraction composite. On the other hand, the wear rate in a unitdistance decreased for abrasive wear test as the sliding distance increased.Key Words : Wear, MMC, production, vortex method, particle, Al-alloy, SiCpabrasive wear, dry sliding