OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUE TO STUDY DRY SLIDING WEAR BEHAVIOR OF ALUMINIUM ALLOY 2218 BASED SELF LUBRICATING COMPOSITE MATERIALS

Materials Science

The present work concentrates on the influence of addition of fly ash particulates as reinforcement on the tribological behaviour of aluminium matrix composites reinforced with Graphite (Gr) particulates. Use of graphite (Gr) reinforcement in aluminium matrix composites has been accounted to be good in reducing wear due to its solid lubricant property. Composites of aluminium alloy 2218 reinforced with 4% graphite particulate and (5%, 10% and 15%) fly ash particulate were produced by stir casting route. The wear and frictional properties of the hybrid metal matrix composites were studied by performing dry sliding wear test using a pin-on-disc wear tester. The experiments were directed as per the Taguchi design of experiment. The wear parameters chosen for the experiment were: sliding speed, applied load, time and sliding distance. Each parameter was assigned three points. The experiment consists of 27 tests according to the L 27 orthogonal array. The investigation was done to find the influence of applied load, sliding speed and sliding distance on wear rate, as well as the coefficient of friction during wearing process. Signal to noise ratio analysis has been carried out to determine optimal parametric condition, which yields minimum wear rate and frictional force. The confirmation experiments were conducted to verify the predicted model.

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