Mechanical and Metallurgical Examinations of Stir Cast Aluminum Matrix Composites: A Review Study

Abstract

Abstract--The drift of research work from monolithic aluminum alloy to composite materials like Metal Matrix Composites (MMC's) is due to the world-wide proviso for economical, high working performance and superior quality materials. Metal matrix composites especially aluminum matrix composites (AMC's) due to their excellent strength with respect to their weight, superior wear resistance, economical and high corrosion resistance are extensively produced and utilized in several applications like, architectural components, structural applications, aerospace, automobile industry, ship building and many sports items and electrical and electronic components. The reinforcements like SiC, B 4 C, Al 2 O 3 , TiB 2 , Red mud, Graphite, Fly ash, and Coconut ash etc. can be easily incorporated as reinforcement agents in the molten melt by employing the economical and widely used stir casting technique, which improves strength, stiffness, fatigue, hardness, wear and creep properties of the AMCs. This paper gives an overview of mechanical, microstructural and wear performances of aluminum centered metal matrix composites produced by stir casting process reinforced with single and multiple types of reinforcements. The problems like reinforcement-metal matrix bonding, distribution of particles, wettability of reinforcing particles and agglomeration phenomenon are discussed in this paper. The effect of various reinforcement particles on aluminum matrix composites on mechanical properties like uts, ys, stiffness, hardness, fatigue, % E, wear and on resulting microstructure is discussed. The Modified and dual step stir casting technique for the fabrication of AMCs is also discussed in this paper. Keywords: Aluminum matrix composite (AMC), stir casting, reinforcement, mechanical properties, wear behavior I. INTRODUCTIONMetal based matrix composites reinforced with ceramic agents have a wide range of applications in aerospace, automobile, structural components and defense sector. Monolithic aluminum alloys have limitations in achieving good combinations of mechanical properties like strength, toughness, stiffness, wear resistance and density. Metal matrix composites are produced to overcome these shortcomings and to encounter the worldwide requirement for light weight materials with higher specific strength, corrosion resistant, high stiffness and excellent wear resistant properties [1][2]. The properties of aluminum alloy like low density, light weight, easy processing technique and fine engineering characterstics favored it as matrix material in MMC's [3]. The aluminum matrix series like AA2xxx, AA5xxx, AA6xxx, and AA7xxx have numerous applications in aerospace, defense instrument, architectural and structural components, automobile, sports good, and ship building [1][2][3][4].For the fabrication of metallic matrix composites several type of manufacturing methods are employed. The choice of appropriate manufacturing method highly alters the resulting composite microstructure, dispersion of ceramic agents, interfacial bonding betwe...

Optimization of Wear Properties in Aluminum Metal Matrix Composites using Hybrid Taguchi-GRA-PCA

“…The components of the array for the multiple performance characteristics recorded are in Table 6, which shows GRCs of each performance characteristics. These values are utilized to assess the correlation coefficient matrix and to calculate the corresponding eigenvalues using Equation (12), and they are listed in Table 7. The eigenvector relating to every eigenvalue is recorded in Table 8, and the weighting contribution of each performance characteristic is obtained by the square of the principal component values of the corresponding eigenvectors.…”

“…These manufactured composite materials are lightweight and have better hardness, which makes them wear resistant structural material in stack conveying applications. MMCs are manufactured to fulfill the demand of lightweight materials supported by high specific strength, excellent wear resistance and high stiffness [26,17,12]. The properties of an aluminum compound like low density, lightweight, simple assembling technique and great mechanical properties favor it as a base material in MMCs [13].…”