Effect of applied load on wear of microwave sintered alumina-graphene ceramic composite material

Abstract

Ceramic materials are of technical and commercial importance and can meet many engineering requirements owing to their thermal, chemical and mechanical performance. Due to its high density and hardness, alumina (Al2O3) is one of the main materials in this category that can be used to produce critical parts. An example of such an application is wear and abrasion resistance. The fabrication root technique and a suitable secondary reinforcement material can enhance a ceramic's wear characteristics. Hence the present work is mainly concentrated on the preparation of alumina ceramic composite material reinforced with different weight proportions of graphene ranging from 0.15wt% to 0.45 wt% (with an interval of 0.1) and fabrication through microwave sintering method. Wear studies are performed on graphene reinforced alumina ceramic material samples using pin-on-disk apparatus at different loads of 5N, 10N, 15N keeping speed of 0.8 m/sec and sliding distance of 40 m constant. The obtained wear results are compared with wear performance of pure alumina samples which are prepared in the same condition. Wear tests even at higher load of 15N revealed that the decrease in wear rate of the composite samples reinforced with 0.35 wt% of grapheme is 35.14% and in the composite samples reinforced with 0.45 wt% of graphene is 34.85% when compared with wear rate of monolithic alumina samples. The effect of different wt%s of graphene on wear properties of obtained ceramic composite is also studied through SEM analysis.