Abstract:
Aluminum is a significant material for all type of manufacturing industries due to its wide
range of alloys and composites. Despite the fact that aluminum alloys have been used in a wide
range of industries due to their excellent and diverse functional characteristics, composite
materials can be modified to provide specific mechanical and tribological properties. An
aluminum alloy with lesser hardness and tensile strength has been strengthened dramatically
by adding ceramic reinforcements. This study aims at formulate and develop hybrid particle reinforced Al-metal matrix
composites using stir casting method, a novel fabrication process in our country to fabricate
metal matrix composite. Also, followed by investigation of its the physical, mechanical,
morphological and machinability characteristics of the developed metal matrix composites.
Three unique compositions of composites have been obtained by varying the wt. % amount of
carbon nanotube, alumina and silicon carbide particulate reinforcements respectively 1%, 2.5%
and 2.5%. Various mechanical properties, essentially the tensile strength, flexural strength,
hardness, impact resistance; and physical properties like porosity, and density were tested; and
a morphological and machinability study has been carried out for investigating the
performance of the newly developed composites. The study showed that there was an 128.57%
increment of tensile strength, an 7.1349% increment of hardness, an 45% increment of impact
resistance, and a 0.8301% reduction of density by adding the particulate reinforcements in
aluminum metal matrix composite.
The morphological analysis demonstrated a more homogenous dispersion of reinforcement
particles in the composite, which indicated the effectiveness of the stir-casting fabrication
method. From the optimized machining parameters, it was evident that higher cutting speed
and feed rate can be obtained by introducing multiple particulate reinforcement in the metal
matrix, which eventually increased the productivity, efficiency and product quality of the
developed composites.
