Investigation of the abrasive wear behavior of an aluminum alloy and its Al2O3 particle reinforced composite by statistical analysis

Abstract

Abstract This experimental investigation deals with the evaluation of abrasive wear behavior of Al alloy and Al2O3 particle reinforced Al alloy metal matrix composites on a pin-on-disc test rig, where the specimens were slided against a 600 grade SiCP emery paper. The specimen preparation and experimentation have been carried out according to the ASTM G-99 standard. A plan of experiments based on the Taguchi design of experiments was developed to acquire data in controlled way. An orthogonal array and the analysis of variance were employed to investigate the percentage of contribution of various process parameters like sliding speed, applied load, sliding distance and their interactions affecting the abrasive wear volume loss of the materials. The correlations between the various factors affecting the abrasive wear behavior of composites were obtained by using multiple linear regression equations. The experimental results showed that the sliding distance has more contribution on the abrasive wear followed by applied load for both materials. The predicted volume loss of the specimens was found to lie close to that of the experimentally observed ones.