Experimental Investigation and Optimisation of Mechanical and Microstructure Behaviour of Stir Cast and Hot-Pressed Al-12.5%Si-ZrO2 Composites: Taguchi and Super Ranking Concept

ABSTRACT

Stir cast processing route was employed to prepare the composite. Taguchi experimental plan with a set of parameters such as stir speed, stir time, ZrO₂ % reinforcement, and casting temperature were studied to know their influence on the composite properties. ZrO₂ % reinforcement, followed by stir speed, is the most dominant factor influence on composite properties. Super ranking concept determined stir casting optimal condition resulted in 25.02% and 5.64% increase in ultimate tensile strength and hardness, whereas 37.68% reduced wear loss of composites compared to initial stir casting conditions. The hot-pressing parameters (pressure, temperature, and dwell time) were analyzed to know the process insights on composite properties. The pressure is the most dominating factor followed by temperature on all the properties of composites. Super ranking concept determined optimal hot-pressing conditions showed a 39.3% reduction in wear loss, 11.54% and 4.88% increase in ultimate tensile strength and hardness values compared to initial hot-pressing condition, respectively. Applying a hot-pressing technique on the optimized conditions of stir casted parts resulted in 40.7% reduction in wear loss, 19.71% and 9.5% increase in ultimate tensile strength and hardness values. The difference in properties obtained for samples fabricated correspond to initial, and optimal conditions of stir casting and hot-pressing technique was strongly justified with resulted microstructures and worn surface morphologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Metal matrix composites
• stir casting
• super ranking concept
• tensile strength
• taguchi method

Notes on contributions

Ishwargouda S Patil: Writing – original draft, Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Funding acquisition. Anarghya A: Formal analysis, Writing – Review & Editing, Funding acquisition. Srikantha S Rao: Formal analysis, Writing – Review & Editing, supervision, Funding acquisition. Mervin A Herbert: Formal analysis, Writing – Review & Editing, supervision, Funding acquisition. Dayanand M Goudar: Formal analysis, Writing – Review & Editing, Funding acquisition.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mechanical Department of Tontadaraya College of Engineering, Gadag for providing the necessary facilities and the support for this project.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability

The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings cannot be shared at this time as the data also forms part of an ongoing study. However, the data will be shared upon the request by emailing to the corresponding author to reproduce the results.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.