Impact abrasive behavior of SiCp/2024Al composites in single pendulum scratch testing

Abstract

Impact abrasive behavior of SiCp/2024Al composites has been investigated using a single pendulum scratch device. The results show that most of the composites exhibit better abrasive resistance than the unreinforced matrix alloy except the one containing 15 vol.% particles of 20 μm in size. The impact abrasive resistance of the composites increases with decreasing particle size and increasing volume fraction. The matrix alloy presents a thin softened layer immediately under the scratch bottom, succeeded by a hardened one for greater depth. The scratching process of the composites containing large particles was that the surface particles were compressed into a surface layer, shocked fragmentally or debonded from the matrix at interfaces, and finally pulled out. For composites containing small particles, the particles could coordinate with the matrix in deformation and were subjected together with the matrix to being ploughed, cut and finally removed.