Production and Characterization of Aluminium 7075 – T651 Alloy / B4C Surface Composite by Friction Stir Processing
R.Ramesh1, N.Murugan3
1R.Ramesh, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India.
2N.Murugan, Professor & Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering,, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India.
Manuscript received on September 28, 2012. | Revised Manuscript received on October 15, 2012. | Manuscript published on October 30, 2012. | PP: 88-90 | Volume-2 Issue-1, October 2012. | Retrieval Number: A0708092112/2012©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Aluminum-based composites reinforced with hard ceramic particles offers high strength, stiffness, and resistance to wear. That combination of properties produced on the surface makes surface composites attractive to a wide range of applications in automotive and aerospace industries. Several modification techniques, such as high energy laser beam, plasma spraying, cast sinter and electron beam irradiation have been developed over the last two decades to fabricate surface metal matrix composites. Those techniques are based on liquid phase processing at high temperature and various problems such as reaction between reinforcement and matrix are encountered. Those limitations can be overcome if processing of surface composite is carried out in solid state. Friction stir processing is an emerging novel, green and energy efficient processing technique to fabricate surface composites which is based on the basic principles of friction stir welding. The distinct advantages of FSP are microstructural refinement, densification, homogeneity, accurate control and variable depth of the processed zone. Among the various metal matrix composites aluminum 7075 – T651 will find more applications. In this paper, it details about the fabrication of Al 7075-B4C surface composites by friction stir processing (FSP) to have improved surface hardness and wear resistance. It was found that the average hardness of friction stir processed surface composite was 62% higher than that of the base metal Aluminum 7075 – T651. The increase in hardness was attributed to fine dispersion of B4C particles and fine grain size of the Aluminum matrix.
Keywords: Friction Stir Processing, Boron Carbide, Brinell hardness, Design of Experiments.