HEAT TREATMENT EFFECT ON MECHANICAL PROPERTIES AND SEM ANALYSIS OF AL6061/WC/B4C/TI/CR METAL MATRIX COMPOSITES

Recent developments in material technology help to find and fabricate new materials which may replace existing materials for various applications. Among those, composite materials play a vital role which is combination of two or more materials with different physical and chemical properties. Aluminum plays a vital role in the automotive, aerospace and marine industries this for its strength, less weight, flexibility and cost. The present study is to cast a metal matrix composite of al 6061 with the selected reinforcing materials. The reinforcing material used here are titanium (Ti), tungsten carbide (Wc), boron carbide (B4C) and chromium (Cr) in the form of particles. The casting is done using the stir casting method and the mechanical properties and SEM analysis of the hybrid composites are tested with the ASTM standard’s and are compared with the pure Al6061. The mechanical properties of the aluminum metal matrix composites such as impact, tensile and hardness are tested. The tensile specimens hardened using the annealing and normalizing process and the tests are taken with the different specimens and these are compared with Al6061.