Wear Dry Behavior of the Al-6061-Al2O3 Composite Synthesized by Mechanical Alloying
Víctor Hugo Mercado–Lemus, C.D. Gómez-Esparza, J.C. Díaz-Guillén, Jan Mayén, Adriana C. Flores‐Gallegos, Hugo Arcos-Gutierrez, Maricruz Hernández-Hernández, Isaías E. Garduño, J A Betancourt-Cantera, R. Pérez-Bustamante
Abstract
The present research deals with the comparative wear behavior of a mechanically milled Al-6061 alloy and the same alloy reinforced with 5 wt.% of Al2O3 nanoparticles (Al-6061-Al2O3) under different dry sliding conditions. For this purpose, an aluminum-silicon-based material was synthesized by high-energy mechanical alloying, cold consolidated, and sintered under pressureless and vacuum conditions. The mechanical behavior was evaluated by sliding wear and microhardness tests. The structural characterization was carried out by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. Results showed a clear wear resistance improvement in the aluminum matrix composite (Al-6061-Al2O3) in comparison with the Al-6061 alloy since nanoparticles act as a third hard body against wear. This behavior is attributed to the significant increment in hardness on the reinforced material, whose strengthening mechanisms mainly lie in a nanometric size and homogeneous dispersion of particles offering an effective load transfer from the matrix to the reinforcement. Discussion of the wear performance was in terms of a protective thin film oxide formation, where protective behavior decreases as a function of the sliding speed.