Effect of rock dust, cenosphere and E-waste glass addition on mechanical, wear and machinability behaviour of Al 6061 hybrid composites

This paper has a propensity to identify low cost and ordinarily available reinforcements besides comparatively reviewing fly ash, bagasse ash, rice husk ash reinforced aluminium composites. This has led to microstructure, mechanical and wear characteristic investigation of newer composite developed through stir casting with cenosphere, rock dust and e-waste cathode ray tube (CRT) panel glass powder. Comparison over experimental results with available reported data of said reinforcements clarifies that newer reinforcements have also yielded equivalent properties. Addition of these newer reinforcements up to 10% increases the tensile strength whereas maximum of 65.12% hardness raise is attained for cenosphere and 63.04% for CRT addition to that of Al 6061 T6. Tensile strength increases up to 9.84% for 15% cenosphere reinforcement, 9.02% for 10% CRT addition. Addition of cenosphere and rock dust up to 15% increases the wear resistance but in the case of CRT powder, wear resistance is high up to 10% and then decreases due to formation of glass globes for further CRT addition. In perspective of the research an admissible increment in wear resistance and machinability of the developed novel hybrid composites is evidenced through scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrographs besides indicating better surface finish while turning.