ELECTROSPUN NANOFIBERS REINFORCED ALUMINIUM MATRIX COMPOSITES, A TRIAL TO IMPROVE THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES

Abstract

A comparison between TiO2 nanofibers and carbon nanofibers as fibers reinforced metal matrix composites with respect to mechanical properties improvements have been made in this paper. Al and Mg have been chosen as metal matrices. The used carbon and ceramic nanofibers (Titanium Oxide) were successfully synthesized using electrospinning technique. Various weight percentage of calcined electrospun TiO2 and carbon nanofibers (1, 3, 5 and 10%) were mixed with metal matrix and fabricated by route of powder metallurgy using High Frequency Induction heat Sintering (HFIHS). Mechanical properties of the sintered composites have been investigated. The manufactured pellets were tested for compression test, hardness and microstructures by the field emission scanning electron microscopes (FESEM), which reveals the homogeneous distribution of nanofibers in the Al/Mg matrices. In addition, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) was employed to obtain the chemical analysis of each composite. The result shows that, the ultimate compressive strength increased to 415 MPa at 5% TiO2, which is 13.5% more than the pure Al. The hardness increased up to 64% in case of using the ceramic nanofibers as reinforcement. While using CNFs as reinforcement to the Al matrix deteriorates the mechanical properties.