Mechanical and Tribological overview of ceramic particulates reinforced aluminium alloy composites

Abstract

This review manuscript highlights the effects of various ceramic particulates on different aspects like tribo-logical (sliding wear), mechanical and thermal behaviour etc. of aluminium alloy composites, across various operating parameters like normal load (N), sliding velocity (m/s), sliding distance (m), temperature (°C), reinforcement weight percentage. It also discusses different fabrication techniques of such composites as reported by various scholars. Such advanced alloyed-composites find frequent applications in automotives, military, marine, structural, etc. applications, where tribo-logical phenomenon plays a dominant role. The material scientists world-wide are actively engage in improving life of such components by enhancing their mechanical, physical, chemical etc. properties along with improvement in wear resistance in a cost-effective manner. This overall enhances the working efficiency of the component in required applications. Single or binary or hybrid ceramic reinforcement with varying content is explored by scholars and has ample scope of further exploration. It has been concluded from the literature review that ceramic reinforcement lead to significant enhancement in mechanical, tribological and thermal characteristics of Al alloy based MMCs. Further, the micro-sized ceramic particulates increase the interfacial bond strength between the matrix-reinforcement that enhances effective load transfer and sustain it at various tribological operating parameters, that further validated by surface morphology studies.

Keywords

• aluminium alloy
• metal matrix composite
• ceramic particulates
• tribology
• mechanical properties