An Experimental and Numerical Investigation on the Hardness and Deformation Behavior of Particle Reinforced AMMC

Abstract

Today’s requirement and demands cannot be accomplished by alloys and metals alone e.g. trusses, branches used for making satellites need to be dimensionally stable between wide ranges of temperatures. These days Metal Matrix Composites (MMC) replaced conventional materials (metals) in many applications due to their superior properties such as light weight, strength to weight ratio, hardness and stiffness, wear, corrosion resistance and withstand with high temperature over conventional materials. Nowadays stress to use lightweight materials has increased because of environmental issues. Some of the examples of components that have been manufactured using metal matrix composites include pistons for diesel engines and connecting rods. Aluminum Material Matrix Composites (AMMC) had superiority over other conventional materials in the field of aerospace, automotive and marine applications owing to their excellent improved properties. These materials are of much interest to the researchers from few decades. These composites initially replaced Cast Iron and Bronze in many applications. With rapid increase in usage of composite in practical application, it is of great interest to do the failure and deformation analysis of these developed materials. However, due to the complexities involved and computational resources required in the analysis, the research in this area is still in the emerging stage. In this present work an attempt has been made to investigate the hardness and deformation behavior of particle reinforced AMMC using numerical and experimental approach. AMMC for experimental investigation are fabricated using stir casting procedure. SEM, EDS and XRD validate the uniform distribution of Al-SiC(10% wt.) composite obtained by stir casting. Mechanical properties such as the microhardness, nanohardness of the composite are selected for the investigation. Microhardness and nanoindentation test has been successfully done on the Al-SiC composite. CAD modeling and simulation have been developed for predicting the hardness of the composite. Axisymmetric model is used for the simulation of nanoindentation whose results has been validates with the experimental data. Based on experiment and simulation results, hardness value has been obtained from the depth of penetration. In addition, the deformation behavior of composite under tensile loading is also investigated with experimentation and simulation. Simulation of particle reinforced MMC has been done through image based modeling. Validation of simulation results obtained through SEM images of deformed surface.