Development, Manufacture and Characterization of Al-Si based wear Resistant Material
Abstract
Alloys of Aluminium and Silicon (Al-Si) found to be a potential replacement material due to the less weight (approximately one third compared to the steel and gray cast iron), lower production cost, machinability, mechanical properties and ability of recycling. However, one of the major limitation of these alloys is low wear resistance. In order to improve its wear characteristic many Particle reinforced Aluminium Matrix Composites (PAMCs) were developed using SiC, TiC, B4C, TiB2, Gr, MoS2, and fly ash as reinforcement particles by different methods (Stir casting, Compo casting, Powder Metallurgy, in-situ method using salts and spray deposition) and their wear characteristics were also studied But there is no research work done on wear characteristics of semisolid processed PAMCs. So a Metal Matric composites (MMC) of Aluminium A356 reinforced with 5%TiB2 was developed by semi solid process and its dry sliding wear characteristic were studied using pin on disc machine with disc material of EN31 steel (55-60 HRC) under the condition at sliding velocity varies from 1m/s to 3m/s and applied load varies from 10N to 30N at constant sliding distance 3000m.A comparative study was done between A356 alloy, A356-5%TiB2 in-situ composite and Semisolid processed alloy, composite it was found that semisolid processed alloy and composite shows more wear than commercial alloy and in-situ composite.
