Modelling and Optimisation of Wear Parameters for Spark Plasma Sintered Al– SiC–Kaoline Hybrid Composite

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ABSTRACT

The effect of naturally available low-cost kaoline clay reinforcement on the mechanical and tribological characteristics of Al–10%SiC–X%kaoline (X = 0, 2, 4, 6, 8) hybrid metal matrix composite fabricated using Plasma Spark Sintering technique was investigated. Hardness and Compression test was conducted to obtain the mechanical properties. Results reveal that maximum hardness of 159 VHN and compression strength of 279 MPa was obtained for Al–10%SiC–4%Kailine composite samples. Incorporation of kaoline reinforcement more than 4% leads to the formation of agglomerations, which was identified by SEM analysis and the corresponding Al₂Cu peak for this agglomeration was conformed through XRD patterns. Wear test was conducted for Al–10%SiC–4%kaoline composite and the effect of process parameters such as applied load, sliding distance and sliding velocity were optimised for the responses like wear rate and C.O.F. ANOVA analysis showed that the most significant process parameters for wear rate are applied load and sliding velocity with their % of the contribution was 54.99 % and 31.93 %, respectively. For C.O.F., Load was influencing most fallowed by sliding velocity and their respective % contribution was 62.43 % and 33.40 %. The optimised values obtained based on this study was 0.00192 mm³/m and 0.28 respectively for wear rate and C.O.F.

KEYWORDS:

• Kaoline reinforcement
• plasma spark sintering
• Taguchi optimisation
• worn surface morphology

Author’s Contribution

V.S.S Venkatesh carried out the fabrication, mechanical characterisation of composite samples and drafted the initial version of the manuscript. Ashish B Deoghare Reviewed and Edited the prepared manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgments

Authors like to thank Central Instrumentation Facility at National Institute of Technology Silchar for XRD analysis. The authors also would like to appreciate the Advance Centre for Material Science at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur for SEM and EDS analysis.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).