Tribological Performance of Aluminium Metal Matrix Hybrid Composites

The present work investigates the tribological wear characteristics (pin-on-disc) of Al6061composite that has been fabricated via stir casting route of liquid metallurgy technique with varying content of aluminium oxide(Al2O3), zirconia sand (ZrSiO4), silicon carbide (SiC) and rice husk ash (RHA) as reinforcement. The test observations can be observed and appreciated that increasing the reinforcement percentage, the properties like density and hardness increased significantly and monolithically. The dry sliding pin-on-disc (POD) wear test is performed using configuration tribometer by various parameters at 50 N load, 600 RPM, 25 min, and the test results state that composites have greater wear resistance. These tribological wear characteristics are then optimized using the L16 orthogonal array Taguchi method, where a weight loss model was created in terms of applied load, abrasive grain size, which revealed that the reinforcement’s weight per cent is the highest influencing factor. Basically, the Al6061 is comparatively soft, and as per dry sliding POD wear concern at the applications of stringers, aircraft wings, seat tracks, floor breams, fuselage of an aircraft’s, the wear resistance plays a crucial role in relative movement at contact surfaces; hence, the present work focused on developing Al6061–SiC/Al2O3/RHA/ZrSiO4 metal matrix hybrid composites with enhanced tribological and mechanical properties. Of all the mixtures, the composites having the optimum percentage of reinforcement materials showed improved properties. To do the tribological wear analysis, samples are slide against SiC abrasive grit, and the worn-out surface is then analysed using scanning electron microscope and EDS. Experimentally, it was found that applied load and sliding distance have an almost negligible effect on wear, whereas the abrasive grain size has the highest impact on wear. The predicted material loss of the hybrid composite samples was found to lie near by that of the experimentally observed ones.