Tribological characteristics of Al6061, boron, and graphite hybrid metal matrix composites

• Published in: Advances in materials and processing technologies (Abingdon, England) Vol. 8; no. 3; pp. 3248 - 3262
• Main Authors: D, Nagesh, S, Raghavendra, Sivaram, NM, S, Suresh, B, Manjunatha, S, Sanketh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 03.07.2022
• Subjects: aluminium composite; analysis of variance; Boron; graphite; stir casting; wear rate
• ISSN: 2374-068X; 2374-0698
• DOI: 10.1080/2374068X.2021.1946323

Tribological properties of any substance give an overview of the life of the substance with respect to its application. Here an attempt is made to investigate the effect of parameters of wear test equipment considering the material type on the wear rate of different composition of hybrid MMC considered. Al6061 is considered as the base matrix and Boron 2 wt% and Graphite 2 wt% are considered as the reinforcement to develop the hybrid MMC with the traditional technique of stir casting. As the work deals with optimisation process the design of experiments is done through Taguchi technique considering L27 orthogonal array with the varying parameters (input) as material (combination of Al-B, Al-Gr and Al-B-Gr), load and speed, to analyse the effects on wear rate as the response. A wear test was performed using pin-on disk apparatus at room temperature for constant load of 20 N, 30 N, 40 N at a fixed sliding speed of 400,600,800 RPM and wear rate increased as the weight percentage of reinforcement increased. The major contribution along with the ranks of the parameters was found out using the Analysis of Variance, from which it is clear that, Boron is the significant factor that affects the hardness and wear loss of hybrid composites followed by Graphite. Confirmatory test was performed for the optimised parameters and the results were within the acceptable range when compared with the experimental results.