Tribological studies on aluminum beryl composites subjected to ECAP process

The strengthening processes of aluminum alloys and their composites are generally assessed after precipitation hardening or following different laid down strain hardening procedures such as Equal Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP), Multi-Axial Forging (MAF), High-Pressure Torsion (HPT), Accumulative Roll Bonding (ARB), etc. Among them, ECAP is considered to be a novel method of producing fine-grained structure with different properties. Ongoing through the available literature, it is noted that the adoption of ECAP in Aluminum metal matrix composites, especially the Aluminum Beryl composites and then assessing their tribological responses, are scarce to come across. Hence, this particular aspect is addressed in this work.In the present investigation, Al 2024 alloys containing 6% Beryl particles, produced by stir cast route and subjected to ECAP operation up to two passes, have been assessed for slide wear and coefficient of friction (CoF) properties for comparison with un-reinforced Al 2024 alloy for qualitative and quantitative evaluation purposes. The wear and friction evaluation are carried out using the well-known Pin-On-Disc (POD) apparatus for three different loads (49 N, 91 N, and 136 N) and sliding distances (2000, 4000 and 6000 m) at a constant sliding speed of 1.67 m/s.The data reveals that the wear loss decreases with increase in the number of passes due to increase in hardness & decrease in grain size for all the three loads and sliding distances employed. Further, the wear losses show an increasing trend with an increase in the applied load. Also, it is observed that the CoF decreases with increase in number of passes at all loads. It is high in the as cast state and it increases with increase in load. It is inferred from the present findings that the ECAP has made a significant impact on the wear behaviour of Al-Beryl composites, thus emphasizing the fact that the composites are suited for wear resistance applications such as in production engineering sectors.