DRY SLIDING WEAR BEHAVIOUR OF HYBRID NICKEL POWDER AND SILICON CARBIDE REINFORCED ALUMINIUM ALLOY COMPOSITES

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study dry sliding behaviour of Al6061-T6 hybrid metal matrix composite reinforced with nickel powder and silicon carbide. The composite sample are prepared by stir casting method with different percentage of Nickel powder (0,0.5,1,1.5 %wt. percentage) and fixed percentage of silicon carbide(2% wt).Wear test was performed on pin –on- disc tribometer. SEM analysis was done to confirm Uniform distribution of reinforcing particles. Taguchi’s L16 orthogonal array (4 x 4) was used for design of experiments to evaluate dry sliding wear performance namely, wear rate. Percentage of filler content (0, 0.5, 1 and1.5 % wt) applied load (10, 20, 30 and 40 N), sliding distance (500, 750, 1000 and 1250 m), sliding velocity (1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5 m/s) are considered as four control factors for wear test. Analysis of variance and main effect plot was done to determine the statistical significance of control factors. A significance level of 5% is considered for the present study. It is observed that among the factors filler content and applied load have prime effect on the wear rate. Increase in percentage of nickel powder decrease the wear rate while increase in applied load increases wear rate. Whereas sliding velocity and sliding distance have insignificant effect on wear rate.