Surface integrity of metal matrix nanocomposite produced by friction stir processing (FSP)

Abstract

Friction-stir processing is considered a green manufacturing process of surface composite fabrication and surface modification. Surface integrity includes different parameters such as roughness, topography, microhardness, and chemical analysis, which is one of the primary features of FSP. The goal of this research is to evaluate the surface integrity of FSP on aluminum matrix nanocomposite. The main parameter effects, including rotational speed, pass number, and the traverse speed on the surface roughness, surface topography, microhardness, and chemical analysis, were studied compressively. The obtained result revealed that the model of the quadratic polynomial is fitted to predict surface integrity. Furthermore, the results showed that the pass number and rotation speed 45.7% and 21.2%, respectively, have the most impact on surface roughness. The most impact on hardness belonged to traversing speed with 55%. Such a way, energy-dispersive spectroscopy analysis revealed that in the traverse speed 50 mm/min the microhardness achieve 127.24 Vickers.