Mechanical, Thermal and Tribological Characterization of Pure Al Functionally Graded Material in Situ with Alumina, Copper and Zinc Sterate as Lubricating Agent

The technological advancement in the sector of materials science is increasing in a rapid and futuristic manner. This, in turn is enormously affecting the manufacturing sector of different components. Today, every industry is striving very hard to satisfy the needs and demands of the customer and adopting very strict design to inspection procedures. Therefore, it is very essential to develop the materials which not only gives a boost to the manufacturing sector, but also satisfies the customer needs and requirements. There is a lot of research done in the field of material science from alloys to the composites but they have their own advantages and limitations. Today, there is lot of research done in the domain of functionally graded materials, which not only produce light weight materials, high strength to weight ratio, but also possesses superior qualities than metal matrix composites, in terms of material composition and functional requirements [2]. So, in this regard, keeping in view of the automobile sector, this paper is keen in focusing of developing functionally graded material, considering pure Al as the matrix constituent and alumina (Al2O3), copper(Cu) as the reinforcing constituents and zinc sterate as lubricating agent. The uniform mixing of the constituents are done by adopting rule of mixtures, and optimum mix ratio is processed and blended with the aid of ball milling machine specified with ASTM E 23 standards [4]. The developed constituents are then compacted using compacting machine with definite compaction and ejection process and the compaction load is varying in between 16.8KN to 18 KN and ejection load varies between 10.5 KN to 12KN.The synthesized green compacts are then sintered at 1100° c for about 4 hours and remained till they are furnace cooled. Then, the processed dry compacts are being characterized for their mechanical properties such as the compression strength and hardness. Micro structural characterization is conducted with the aid of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-rays diffraction(XRD)&energy dispersive X-rays analysis(EDX), and tribological characteristics such as wear rate, coefficient of friction and frictional force are successfully accessed by the DUCOM pin on disc wear test apparatus TR-201 with 68 HRC and various graphs are drawn to determine various characteristics of the material with the functional parameters such as sliding velocity, wear time and wear distance in wear characterization. The salient points inferred is, while mechanical characterization, as the amount of alumina is increased while keeping the cu weight % fixed, the compressive strength of the material is linearly decreased and then at a sudden rate. The compression strength is increased linearly from inner region to the outer region with increase in weight percentage of Cu. The micro structural analysis also inferred that, there is a valid inclusion of alumina and copper particles with the matrix constituents having a strong bonding with reference to various layers of the region.