Statistical Analysis of Tribological Properties of Mg(AM50)/GNF-Al2O3sf Hybrid Composites

Abstract

The present article describes the tribological properties of Mg-based hybrid composites reinforced with graphite nanofiber (GNF) and alumina short fiber (Al2O3sf) that were investigated. The Mg/GNF/Al2O3sf hybrid composites with varying volume fraction of fiber (10 vol.%, 15 vol.%, 20 vol.%) were developed. SEM observations indicate that the GNF cluster distributions within the array of the Al2O3sf network are found to be relatively good. The Taguchi design of the experiment has been applied to conduct the wear test, and the statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been used to evaluate the influence of wear test parameters on the wear loss and coefficient of friction (COF) of the composites. The influence of wear test parameters such as volume fraction of fiber (VF), applied load (AL), sliding distance (SD), and sliding speed (SP) on the wear loss and COF of composites was analyzed under dry sliding conditions. The results of ANOVA indicate that the sliding distance was found to be the prominent factor affecting wear loss, and the applied load influenced the COF most significantly. Furthermore, the composites with 20 vol.% of fiber had lower wear loss than those with 10 vol.% and 15 vol.% of fiber. The COF of composites with 15 vol.% of fiber was found to be slightly lower compared to the 10 vol.% and 20 vol.% of fiber cases. The results imply that the hybridization of GNFs and Al2O3sf, as well as the formation of Mg17Al12 and Al2MgC2 precipitates enhanced the tribological properties of the Mg hybrid composites.