Improvements in mechanical properties of aluminium alloy-titanium di boride and boron carbide hybrid composite produced through friction stir processing route

Abstract

Abstract Aluminium alloys finds many applications in automotive, aerospace and ship building industries. Among all series AA 5083 alloys are commonly used in ship building industry but possess inferior mechanical properties which are replaced with aluminium alloy composites due to high strength to weight ratio. The present work is focussed to produce aluminium alloy composites with hybrid reinforcement Particles using friction stir processing route. The different proportions of boron carbide and titanium di boride particles are used as hybrid reinforcement particles. The aluminium alloy composites are fabricated by different proportions of reinforcement particles. The properties of fabricated composites such as ultimate tensile strength, micro Vickers hardness and impact strength are evaluated. The mechanical properties are improved and found that highest values of mechanical properties are obtained for 75% TiB2\u202f+\u202f25% B4C hybrid reinforced composite. The microstructural evaluations of composites are analysed using optical and scanning electron microscopy. It is found that hybrid reinforcement particles are uniformly distributed in the stirring zone without any micro defects.