Development of AL LM25 Fe3O4 MMC and its characterization

Abstract

quotThe need for low cost, lightweight and high stiffness materials in automobile, aerospace and defense industry applications provide a clear view for developing many new and improved materials, particularly metal matrix composite (MMC) materials. Aluminium MMCs have emerged as advanced engineering materials for the many high precision potential applications in engineering sectors because of their superior mechanical and wear resistance as compared to a traditional aluminium alloy. The Aluminium based Metal Matrix Composites (MMCs) are used for wide variety of engineering applications. They are prepared to give better strength, abrasion resistance, stiffness, creep resistance and dimensional stability. Metal matrix composites based on aluminium are widely and universally used in the aerospace and automobile industries, their properties can be improved for further development and applications. It is tried to make them cost-effective. The efforts to fabricate the economical and less expensive composite components are done in the present work. LM25 matrix and Fe3O4 is taken as reinforcement material. MMC was fabricated with a low-cost conventional casting method. newline This work shows the change in different important properties of aluminum LM25 based metal matrix composite with different combinations of LM25 and Fe3O4. Experiments are carried out in three different combinations of Fe3O4 powder (2.5%, 5% and 7.5% by weight) with LM25 and checked for mechanical properties like hardness, tensile properties and impact strength. It is seen that as the percentages of reinforcement increase there is good improvement in the hardness of this MMC, good improvement in tensile strength was also observed and there was a small change in the impact strength. newlineMicrostructure analysis was studied and it was observed that in the present work, the microstructure is a combination of and#945;-Al which is face-centered cubic, ferrite which is a body-centered cubic structure, and the binary eutectic mixture of Al-Si with different phases of Fe and Al. newline