A study of the residual stress and its influence on tensile behaviors of fiber-reinforced SiC/Al composite

Abstract

Unidirectional fiber-reinforced SiC/Al composite was fabricated by hot pressing. The residual stress in the composite generated by heated treatment, sub-zero treatment, or pre-loading was measured by X-ray diffraction. In addition, tensile tests were carried out for the composite, and the effect of the residual stress on the tensile behaviors was evaluated by both the experimental investigation and the calculation analysis based on the the rule of mixture (ROM) taking the residual stress into account. The experimental results showed that the residual stress had great influence on the tensile stress when the tensile stress was small; while the influence became weaker and weaker with the increase in tensile stress and almost disappeared when the tensile stress reached the ultimate tensile strength. Furthermore, the residual stress almost had no effect on Young’s modulus of the SiC/Al composite. The calculation analysis based on the ROM taking the residual stress into account was found to be a simple and effective way to evaluate the effect of residual stress on the tensile behaviors of the SiC/Al composite.