Journal of Minerals and Materials Characterization and Engineering, 2014, 2, 54-60 Published Online January 2014 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jmmce ) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jmmce.2014.21009 Mechanical and Machining Properties Analysis of Al6061-Cu-Reinforced SiC P Metal Matrix Composite Serajul Haque 1* , Prem Kumar Bharti 2 , Akhtar Hussain Ansari 3 1 Mechanical Engineering, Azad Institute of Engineering and Technology, Lucknow, India 2 Mechanical Engineering Department, Integral University, Lucknow, India 3 Mechanical Engineering Department, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India Email: * serajull@gmail.com , bharti.pk@rediffmail.com , ahaamu@yahoo.com Received September 1, 2013; revised October 30, 2013; accepted November 9, 2013 Copyright © 2014 Serajul Haque et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In accor- dance of the Creative Commons Attribution License all Copyrights © 2014 are reserved for SCIRP and the owner of the intellectual property Serajul Haque et al. All Copyright © 2014 are guarded by law and by SCIRP as a guardian. ABSTRACT The metal matrix composite (MMC), despite of its high stiffness, strength, corrosion resistance, wear resistance, non-react with chemicals and so many other tailored qualities which are never obtained in alloy of metals, has limited utilization due to the high cost of fabrication. In this study, a modest attempt has been made to find out the process parameters at which best mechanical properties of Al6061, 4% Cu and reinforced 5% SiC p ceramic MMC can be obtained. The addition of 4% Cu in Al6061 is more or less comparable to the composition duralu- min, which are widely used in aerospace applications. SiC p is hard and has linear thermal expansion at high temperature. With reinforcement of SiC p in Al6061-Cu alloy, it can be postulated that hardness of MMC retains at high temperature applications. An analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and linear regression was used for analysis of data with the help of SPSS (Version-17.0). Independent parameters are five levels of pouring rates (1.5 cm/s, 2.0 cm/s, 2.5 cm/s, 3.0 cm/s and 3.5 cm/s), and material type (Al6061 + 4% Cu alloy and Al6061 + 4% Cu, rein- forced 5% SiC p MMC processed using stir casting technique) and dependent parameters are hardness and im- pact strength material removal rates of workpiece. It is found that at different pouring rates material hardness and impact strength of workpiece are highly significant but the material removal rate of workpiece is having no significance value. At pouring rate of 2.5 cm/s and 700˚C ± 5˚C pouring temperature, optimum values of hard- ness and impact strength are observed as compared to other values of pouring rates (1.5 cm/s, 2.0 cm/s, 3.0 cm/s and 3.5 cm/s). Material Removal rate for work pieces of Al6061 + 4% Cu alloy is less as compared to MMC. So it can be concluded that MMC has better machining ability compared to Al6061 + 4% Cu alloy. Material removal rate of Al6061 + 4% Cu, reinforced 5% SiC p MMC has maximum values at 1.5 cm/s pouring rate compared to 2.0 cm/s, 2.5 cm/s, 3.0 cm/s and 3.5 cm/s pouring rates. With reinforcement of 5% SiC trend of mechanical properties is same, but the hardness and impact strength of MMCs are increased by 25% and 20% respectively. Also it is observed from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) that at pouring rate 2.5 cm/s a better homogeneity can be obtained. KEYWORDS MMC; Al6061 + 4% Cu Alloy; SiC Particulate; Stir Casting Technique; Mechanical Properties; Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM); Machining Property of MMC 1. Introduction MMCs of aluminium are used for space shuttle, com- mercial airliners, electronic substrates, bicycles, automo- biles, golf clubs and a variety of other applications due to its light weight [1]. Al-SiC p metal matrix composites possess many excellent properties such as high specific strength, high specific stiffness, small coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) and good wear resistance, etc. [2-5], and these qualities make it appropriate for demand- ing application in aerospace and automobile industries. * Corresponding author. OPEN ACCESS JMMCE