Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
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Materials Today: Proceedings 5 (2018) 20690–20698 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings
2214-7853 © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of Materials Processing and characterization.
ICMPC_2018
Investigation of mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes
reinforced aluminium composite by metal injection molding
Vilas G Dhore
a,b
, W S Rathod
a
, K N Patil
b
a
Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute, Mumbai, 400019, India
b
K J Somaiya College of Engineering, Mumbai, 400077, India
Abstract
The work presents the metal injection molding (MIM) of carbon nanotubes reinforced aluminium matrix
nanocomposite. The paraffin wax (PW), high density polyethylene (HDPE), stearic acid (SA) is used as a binder.
Sintering of aluminium is a critical issue in injection molding. The new blind mold cavity sintering method is
adopted to impart the strength in the MMC. The surface morphology is observed by the SEM. It is seen that
aluminium particles uniformly welded and wide pores are visible in the MMC- Al product. Further the low
temperature blind mold sintering helps to retain CNTs in the MMC-Al matrix. This imparts the higher hardness
which is comparable with the aluminium alloy. The hardness tests carried out on sintered samples shows the results
ranging from 42 to 73 BHN. The pores in these samples tested are in the ranges from 0.25μm to 1.0μm.
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of Materials Processing and characterization.
Keywords: Carbon nanotubes; Catalyst; Synthesis; Scanning electron microscopy; Powder metallurgy , Aluminium composite
1. Introduction
There is continuous demand of light weight material with better mechanical properties. Aluminium is second most
commonly used metal after iron due to its low density and corrosion resistance characteristics. Modern engineering
systems quest wide variety of material properties, which conventional metallic alloy does not achieve. Metal matrix
composite (MMCs) are suitable to develop a custom made properties for wide range of engineering applications[1].
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: vilasdhore@somaiya.edu