DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF AUTOMOTIVE GEARS USING ALUMINIUM MATRIX NANO COMPOSITES

Today Aluminium matrix composites (AMCs) are being widely employed for building, bridges, aircraft, navel, sports and automotive applications due to its high strength, high hardness and wear resistance along with light weightiness and economical production. The drive toward designing AMC components is to utilize the desired characteristics of metals and ceramics to fulfill the design requirements in optimum cost and performance level. This study involve the development of Al6061- nano Alumina composite gears for automobiles and testing of their hardness and wear resistance. The aluminium matrix nanocomposite gears were fabricated by reinforcing Aluminium 6010 alloy with nano aluminium oxide (alumina). The gear blanks were developed using ultrasonic assisted stir casting followed by heat treatment and hot forging. The spur gears were developed by machining of teeth in the gear blank. A wear testing set-up for testing of spur gears was fabricated and the wear tests were performed on the developed gears using wear testing set-up. The outcome of the work displays that the reinforcement of nano Al2O3 particles in aluminium matrix improves the hardness and wear resistance.