Bonfring International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, December 2012 143 Tribological Properties of Aluminium 2024 Alloy– Beryl Particulate MMC’s H.B. Bhaskar and Abdul sharief Abstract--- Metal Matrix Composites (MMCs) are emerging as the most versatile materials for advanced structural, automotive, aviation, aerospace, marine, defense applications and other related sectors because of their excellent combination of properties. In the present investigation, Al2024-Beryl composites were fabricated by liquid metallurgy route by varying Weight Percentage (wt. %) of reinforcement from 0 wt. % to 10 wt. % in steps of 2 wt. %. The dry sliding wear tests were conducted to examine the wear behavior of the Al2024 alloy and its composites. The sliding wear tests were conducted for various loads, speeds and sliding distances. The result reveals that wear rates of the composite is lower than that of the matrix alloy and friction coefficient was minimum when compared to monolithic alloy. The incorporation of beryl particles as reinforcement material in Al2024 alloy improves the tribological characteristics. Keywords--- MMCs, Al2024, Wear Rate, Beryl, Pin-on- Disc, Coefficient of Friction I. INTRODUCTION LUMINIUM Metal Matrix Composites (AMMCs) are the new candidate materials used in varieties of engineering applications. Aluminum and its alloys have been used as matrix material owing to its wide applications in industrial sector. To increase the mechanical and tribological properties, hard reinforcement phase such as particulate, fiber or whiskers are uniformly distributed. These materials have emerged as the important class of advanced materials giving engineers the opportunity to tailor the material properties according to their needs. Essentially these materials differ from the conventional engineering materials from the viewpoint of homogeneity.[1] AMMCs are a class of composite materials which are having desirable properties like low density, high specific stiffness, high specific strength, controlled co efficient of thermal expansion, increased fa 1 tigue resistance and superior dimensional stability at elevated temperatures etc. [2]. AMMCs have emerged as the advanced engineering materials giving engineers the opportunity to tailor the material properties according to their H.B. Bhaskar, Research Scholar, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sri Siddhartha Institute of Technology, Maralur Post, Tumkur- 572105, Karnataka, India. E-mail: bhaskarhbssit@gmail.com Abdul sharief, Professor and Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering, P.A. College of Engineering, Mangalore -574153, Karnataka, India. E-mail:abdulsharief2010@gmail.com DOI: 10.9756/BIJIEMS.1845 needs. The mechanical and tribological properties of the matrix material was improved by reinforcing the various reinforcements ranging from very soft materials like Graphite, Talc etc., to high hardened ceramic particulates like SiCp, Al 2 O 3 , etc., [3]. In recent years, particulate reinforced aluminum alloy composites fabricated have shown significant improvement in tribological properties, including sliding wear, abrasive wear, friction and seizure resistance [4]. An excellent review on the dry sliding wear of discontinuously reinforced aluminum composites by Sannino et al., [5] reported about the principal tribological parameters that control the friction and wear performance of discontinuously reinforced aluminum composites. The mechanical and physical factors have been identified as sliding velocity and normal load whereas the material factors are volume fraction, type of reinforcement and size of reinforcement. The volume fractions of reinforcement have the strongest effect on the wear resistance and have been studied [6-9]. Many researchers have carried out the work to increase the wear resistance of MMCs by different types of reinforcements. The main outcome of these is that the reinforcement improves the resistance to sliding wear [10-11]. However, the research works on the dry sliding wear of aluminium alloys containing beryl particles were limited. Therefore in the present investigation an attempt is made to study the sliding wear behavior of Al2024-Beryl particulate composites for different weight percentages of beryl particles. II. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS 2.1 Material The matrix alloy selected for the development of composite material is Al-Cu-Mg alloy and designated by the aluminium association as Al2024-T6. The chemical composition of the matrix material is given in the Table 1. Beryl, which is naturally occurring and chemically having beryllium–alumina–silicate [Be 3 Al 2 (SiO 3 ) 6 ] was used as the reinforcement material. The chemical composition of beryl particles used for development of the composite are mentioned in the Table 2. Table 1: Chemical Composition of Al2024 Alloy (wt.%) Table 2: Composition of Reinforcement Material (wt.%) A Al Cu Fe Mg Mn Si 91.95 4.63 0.35 1.4 0.6 0.41 Ti Ni Zn Cr Pb Sn 0.05 0.01 0.2 0.38 0.04 0.03 ISSN 2277-5056 | © 2012 Bonfring