Experimental investigation on Performance characteristics of a CI Engine with al7075 SIC AL 2O3 hybrid Metal matrix composite piston

Abstract

By substituting conventional steel and cast-iron parts with lighter materials such as magnesium, aluminium alloys, polymers, and their composites, the overall weight, and fuel usage can be reduced by half. Magnesium and aluminum alloys offer greater weight-to-strength ratios than other lighter materials, but its characteristics degrade significantly at lower temperatures, limiting their applications. To address these issues, these alloys are supplemented with various elements such as fibers, whiskers, and particles resulting in metal matrix composites. The present study involves the synthesis of novel Aluminium Hybrid Metal Matrix Composites (AHMMCs) using cost-effective stir casting technique. The base material considered for fabrication of hybrid composite is aluminium alloy 7075 (Al7075), with which different weight proportions of primary reinforcement silicon carbide (SiC) (3, 6, 9, and 12 wt.%) and secondary reinforcement aluminium oxide (Al2O3) (2, 4, 6 and 8 wt.%) is added to form the AHMMCs. newlineThis research work is performed in three stages. In the first stage, AHMMCs are fabricated by varying the weight fractions of SiC and Al2O3 along with different stirring times and stirring speeds during stir casting and adopting a Latin square orthogonal array L16 based on Taguchi s Design of Experiments (DoE). From the 16 samples, wear analysis is performed by preparing pins as per G99 ASTM standard. The wear loss, Coefficient of Friction (CoF) and, frictional force are recorded using the data acquisition system for constant load and speed. newline