EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THERMAL STABILITY OF CARBON NANOTUBES REINFORCED ALUMINIUM MATRIX USING TGA-DSC ANALYSIS

Metal matrix composites are grabbing more attention by researchers due to their outstanding properties which meets the requirements of a specific application. This paper deals with the experimental investigations done to examine the thermal stability of Matrix under various thermal applications and also to study the effect of MWCNT content and particle size on thermal properties of the Al-CNT metal matrix. Different characterization techniques such as Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry analysis (DSC) were performed for the Aluminium-CNT metal matrix. Thermal gravimetric analysis revealed that maximum weight loss is found to be 0.44% for 1.5 wt % of CNT (type2) in Aluminium which is less compared to the weight loss of pure Aluminium. Hence a minimum of 0.24% weight loss was found for 1.0 weight % of CNT (type 2) in Aluminium. Differential Scanning Calorimetry analysis revealed that rate of heat flow increase gradually with the increase in outer diameter of selected carbon nanotubes and maximum heat flow of 106.6 mW for 1.5 wt% of CNT (type3) in Aluminium which was 40% greater than that of pure Aluminium. Thus TGA-DSC tests helps in investigating the thermal stability of selected Al-CNT metal matrix. KEYWORDS: Carbon nanotubes (CNT), Powder Metallurgy, Metal matrix composites, ThermoGravimetric Analysis (TGA) & Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC)