Effect on Microstructure and Hardness of Reinforcement in Al–Cu with Al4C3 Nanocomposites

Abstract

By superposition, the individual strengthening mechanisms via hardness analyses and the particle dispersion contribution to strengthening were estimated for Al–C and Al–C–Cu composites and pure Al. An evident contribution to hardening due to the density of dislocations was observed for all samples; the presence of relatively high-density values was the result of the difference in the coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) between the matrix and the reinforced particles when the composites were subjected to the sintering process. However, for the Al–C–Cu composites, the dispersion of the particles had an important effect on the strengthening. For the Al–C–Cu composites, the maximum increase in microhardness was ~210% compared to the pure Al sample processed under the same conditions. The crystallite size and dislocation density contribution to strengthening were calculated using the Langford–Cohen and Taylor equations from the microstructural analysis, respectively. The estimated microhardness values had a good correlation with the experimental. According to the results, the Cu content is responsible for integrating and dispersing the Al4C3 phase. The proposed mathematical equation includes the combined effect of the content of C and Cu (in weight percent). The composites were fabricated following a powder metallurgical route complemented with the mechanical alloying (MA) process. Microstructural analyses were carried out through X-ray analyses coupled with a convolutional multiple whole profile (CMWP) fitting program to determine the crystallite size and dislocation density.

Microstructural and Mechanical Characterization of Al Nanocomposites Using GCNs as a Reinforcement Fabricated by Induction Sintering

“…For practical purposes, the H L parameter is considered as the sum of H PN and H SS . The H L parameter was calculated previously [ 16 ]: for pure Al samples this value is 29.48 VH and for the samples containing C and Cu the value is 25.3 HV. The strengthening hardness effect by dislocations, H D , is described by the modified Taylor Equation (2) [ 17 , 18 ]: H D = kρ 1/2 where k = aMGb, G is the modulus of elasticity in shear, which is near to 26 GPa, b is Burger’s vector 0.2863 nm, a is the coefficient of the dislocation pattern hardness, M is the Taylor factor, and ρ is the dislocation density in the final condition.…”