Reinforcement of aluminium-matrix composites with glass fibre by metallurgical synthesis

Abstract

Continuous pressure put on researchers all over the world these days to design materials of improved properties create opportunities to study new methods of production in conjunction with entirely new and innovative materials such as alloys or composites. The authors in the current research manufactured aluminium reinforced with glass fibre (GF) using metallurgical synthesis, which is an unconventional and not sufficiently studied method of production. The composites with 1, 2 and 5 wt.% of glass fibre were produced with additional material obtained using consolidation of aluminium powder in extrusion process as reference material with 5 wt.% of glass fibre. All the materials were subjected to series of tests in order to determine their microstructure, density, electrical properties, hardness and susceptibility to plastic working in the compression test. It was found that glass fibre during metallurgical synthesis of aluminium composite partially melted and thus did not reinforce the material as well as during extrusion, which has been observed not only in the scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis but also in the analysis of macroscopic physical and mechanical properties. Based on the analysed samples, it may be stated that electrical conductivity of the samples obtained via metallurgical synthesis is higher than might be estimated on the basis of the rule of mixtures and glass fibre content and concerning the sample with 5 wt.% of GF is higher (32.1 MS/m) than of the reference material obtained in extrusion process (30.6 MS/m). Similar situation has been observed in terms of hardness of the tested samples where a minor increase in hardness was noticeable as the amount of glass fibre increased in the composites obtained by metallurgical synthesis. It is believed to be related to the melting of glass fibre, which reduced the volume fraction of GF containing mainly silicon oxides and their diffusion into the aluminium matrix, thus causing solid solution strengthening.