The influence of volume fraction of SiC particles on the properties of Al/SiCp nanocomposites produced by powder metallurgy with high energy ball milling

Resumo

In this research, the objective is to investigate the effect of the volume percentage of SiC nanoparticles on the physical and mechanical properties of Al/SiC composite produced by powder metallurgy. For the mixing and the proper dispersion of SiC nanoparticles with 0, 1, 3 and 5% volume fraction of SiC in the aluminum matrix, a high energy planetary ball mill with the speed of 350 rpm and ball to powder weight ratio of 10: 1 was used under argon atmosphere. The powder samples were pressed in an onside template under a pressure of 500 MPa and sintered in a tube furnace under argon atmosphere for 2 h at 610°C. FE-SEM image and EDS analysis revealed that SiC nanoparticles represent uniformly dispersion in the aluminum matrix and the density of all the samples have increased while the porosity percentages have dramatically decreased after the sintering process. Furthermore, with the increase of the volume fraction of SiC nanoparticles the hardness also increases.