Effect of ceramic reinforcement amount on the hardness of the aluminum matrix composite

Abstract

Composite are one of the necessity of the current industrial infrastructure because of change in day to day requirements of the consumers. One of the most useful composite in aeronautical and automobile industries are aluminum ceramic composites because of their improved mechanical and thermal properties. However, amount of reinforcement has significant effect the properties of the composites material. Therefore, it is necessary to find out optimum amount of reinforcement that has the significant effect on the particular property of the composite material. Therefore, in the current study, Al-SiC (Aluminum-Silicon Carbide) metal matrix composite was fabricated using stir casting method. Parameters like stirring speed and temperature were kept constant during the process. Sic particle of 200 mesh size was used in different proportions. The reinforcement amount was varied from 0 to 12.5%. The influence of the percentage variation of the composite was studied based on the hardness test, microstructure analysis, optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) and SEM-EDX. The OES, microstructure analysis and SEM-EDX analysis show retention of SiC in pure aluminium. The SEM-EDX of composite with 7.5% SiC addition shows 5.94% SiC retention that suggests the 79 % efficiency of the process. Moreover, it was observed from the hardness analysis that increases in the percentage of SiC increases hardness. Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) and EDS show the inclusion of iron [Fe] from stirrer blade material in results.