Experimental Investigation of Physical and Mechanical Properties of Al-Cu-ZrO2-TiO2 Composites

Abstract

Composite Materials plays a vital role in the formation of mankind, ranging from the habitation of early civilisation to enable future modernisation. In this present work titania and zirconia reinforced Al6063-Cu composite has been developed by using a new casting process comprising of clay soil and sand mold. On top of that stirrer mechanism has also been used to mix the hybrid abrasive particles of Single Particle Size (SPS), Double Particle Size (DSP) and Triple Particle Size (TPS) in the Al-Cu alloy which is a completely new approach. Taguchi L18 orthogonal arrays have been used in this study to reduce the number of tests. For this present research work, 5%, 7.5% and 10% of hybrid abrasive have been mixed in the alloy to investigate its different properties like elastic modulus, ductility and density. It has been observed that in addition of the reinforcements in the newly developed composites elastic modulus, ductility and density have been improved to 31.42%, 40% and 19.81% respectively. Due to this improved properties this composite can be used to manufacture bearing, valve, aircraft electronics and many other appliances. The experimental results were analyzed by the SN ratio plot and an RSM model was used to predict these properties and to estimate the affecting factors for each property. Further, the RSM models have been corroborated by performing the experiments on the newly manufactured composites for elastic modulus, ductility and density. The result obtained from RSM model shows good similarity with the experimental results.