Improving the wear resistance of cast aluminum alloys by the melt thermal-rate treatment

Abstract

The method of the melt thermal-rate treatment has been successfully tested to increase the macrohardness and abrasive wear resistance of a low-alloy cast aluminum alloy of the Al-Mg-Si system. It was found that an increase in the melt superheating temperature to 900 °C with subsequent isothermal holding and fast cooling to the pouring temperature leads to a decrease in weight loss from 0.359 to 0.324 in comparison with the initial state, which corresponds to an increase in the coefficient of relative wear resistance to 1.11. A good correlation has been found between wear resistance and macrohardness of treated alloys. Application of the proposed approach will increase the service life of aluminum parts exposed to various abrasive effects, however, to further increase the wear resistance, it is recommended to obtain a reinforced composite structure in the Al-Mg-Si system using the melt thermal-rate treatment.