Correlating the microstructure with wear properties of aluminium silicon carbides

Sammanfattning: Aluminium is one of the metals playing a prominent role in automobile industry after cast iron. Because of its light weight property and good mechanical properties. When aluminium reinforced with silicon carbide showing good tribological properties and improved strength. Aluminium silicon carbide needs some good wear and frictional properties to use it as break disc. Aluminium reinforced with 15% and 20% silicon carbide and casted in two different ways, liquid casting and stir casting. Four different composites are compared in this paper. Hardness test was carried out on the samples. Increase in the Vickers hardness with increase in silicon carbide reinforcement for both the castings is observed. Rockwell C hardness is showing decreasing trend with increase in SiC reinforcement. The scratch resistance of the surface under micro level was analysed with the help of nano scratch test. The SiC particles in the aluminium matrix are resisting the indenter from deep deformation of the surface. Frictional forces are dropped whenever the indenter met the SiC particles. In other cases, SiC particles are deforming the aluminium matrix in the form of broken particles. The plastic deformation of aluminium is observed, and material is piled up on sideways of groove at high load.Sliding wear behaviour of the composites are investigated by means of reciprocating pin on plate wear rig. The test was carried out at load of 20N for five different sliding duration. Aluminium with 20% silicon carbide of liquid casting is used as a base metal. The worn-out surface of the samples is analysed in SEM. The metallography of the worn-out samples is showing some deep grooves and abrasion of the material. Wear debris from both the surfaces are forming into a cluster of layers. These layers are protecting the surface from wear in some areas were observed. Composition of tribo layer formed during the test was investigated with the help of EDS analysis. The tribo layer are rich in aluminium and silicon elements because both the samples are made of aluminium silicon carbide.