Mechanisms governing the tensile, fatigue, and wear behavior of carbon nanotube reinforced aluminum alloy

ABSTRACT

This work is concerned with understanding the influence of reinforcement mechanisms of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on mechanical, wear, and fatigue tests on an Aluminium-Silicon (AlSi) alloy. The reinforcement mechanism is presented through the observation of fracture morphology of the different tests. Results of mechanical properties, fatigue life performance, and wear loss is presented and discussed. It is shown that the CNTs reinforcement effect is active simultaneously in all previous properties and the reinforcement physical mechanism seems to be essentially due to a reinforcement effect of the interface that seems to be similar in all mentioned mechanical solicitations.

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon nanotubes (CNTs)
• Al-matrix composite
• static properties
• fatigue life
• wear
• fracture morphologies

Funding

This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology through the project references PTDC/EME-PME/68664/2006 and EXCL/EMS-TEC/0460/2012.