Effect of Heat Treatment on the Wear Behaviour of Functionally Graded LM13/B4C Composite

Aluminium alloy reinforced with boron carbide (10 wt.%) was fabricated using stir casting method followed by centrifugal casting and the cylindrical specimen with dimension 150 x 150 x 15 mm was obtained. The composite specimens were heat treated at various aging temperatures and aging time for property improvement. Solution treatment was done at 525 ℃ for 5 hrs. Taguchi’s method was used for designing the plan of experiments and L27 orthogonal array was formulated for the analysis of data. The wear test was conducted on the outer periphery of centrifugally cast Functionally Graded composites using pin-on-disc tribometer. Optimization of parameters such as applied load (10 N, 20 N, 30 N), agingtemperature (150 ℃, 175 ℃, 200 ℃) and aging time (2 hrs, 6 hrs, 10 hrs) was done using Signal-to-Noise ratio. “Smaller-the-better” criterion was used for analyzing the results. Results ended up with a conclusion that aging time (92.19 %) had major influence on tribological behavior followed by aging temperature (5.36 %) and applied load (1.95 %). Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) analysis was performed to understand the wear mechanism in heat treated specimens.