Experiments on the wear characteristics of A356 MMNCs fabricated using ultrasonic cavitation

The wear properties of nanocomposites are evaluated in the present work. Owing to its good castability, A356 has been chosen as matrix material. Since Nano silicon carbide (SiC) and A356 are close in terms of density, SiC has been selected as reinforcement material. The dispersion of nano sized reinforcements in the metal matrix composite is challenging due to their higher surface to volume ratio of particles which results in agglomeration and clustering. Hence, the author had proposed an ultrasonic probeassisted stir-casting method in this work for a uniform distribution of particles in the melt. Due to the nano sized reinforcements, interaction at the phase interface becomes enhanced due to the increased surface area which leads to improved material properties, even at a low weight fraction of the reinforcement. So, Nano SiC particles of size 50nm (from 0.1 to 0.5 by wt %) were added. Through SEM microstructures, it has been observed that reinforcements were well-dispersed in the aluminium matrix. Test specimens were prepared and tested as per ASTM standard. The experiments were conducted using a pin on the disc wear tester at different loads (30N & 40N) and at constant speed. With the addition of 0.5 wt % of nanoparticles, the wear resistance of the nanocomposites improved by 53.735% and 47.04% at 30N and 40N respectively compared to pure aluminium alloy