Effects of Holding Time on the Properties of Recycled Aluminum-Copper-Cullet Metal Composites

Abstract

Aluminum (Al) scrap reinforced with copper (Cu) chips and fine cullet powder (CP) were used to produce aluminum copper cullet (Al-Cu-CP) composite by direct recycling via stir casting method. The Al-Cu-CP composites were fabricated at 800 °C with 5 wt% of reinforcements and at various holding times. The Al composites were investigated through density And microhardness tests. X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique was used to ascertain the chemical composition of the products and also to examine the orientation of the constituent elements in the composites. The densities of the fabricated composites were found to be very similar to one another. Whereas, the results for microhardness test has shown an increasing order from 30 minutes holding time to 60 minutes and declined drastically within 75 minutes to 90 minutes. The XRD results revealed that the chemical composition of the composites were identical but the intensity of the strongest peaks at (111) were varied from one another with the composite fabricated at 60 minutes having the highest peak as well as the smallest d-spacing.