Production of Aluminum AA6061 Hybrid Nanocomposite from Waste Metal Using Hot Extrusion Process: Strength Performance and Prediction by RSM and Random Forest

Abstract

To date, various studies have analysed the effects of reinforced ceramic on the properties of AA6061 recycled aluminum alloy chips, such as the tensile strength and fractography. However, a comprehensive analysis of the properties of hybrid composite with the addition of nano-silica oxide and nano-copper oxide reinforcements is still very limited. Therefore, this study aimed to optimise the factors comprising the preheating temperature (PHT), preheating time (PHti), and volume fraction (VF) of reinforcements then determine their impacts on the physical and mechanical properties of the recycled solid-state extruded composite aluminum chips. A total of 45 specimens were fabricated through the hot extrusion technique. The response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to study the optimisation at a PHT range of 450–550 °C with PHti of 1–3 h and VF of 1–3 vol% for both reinforcements (SiO2 and CuO). Moreover, a random forest (RF) model was developed to optimize the model based on a metaheuristic method to improve the model performance. Based on the experimental results the RF model achieve better results than response surface methodology (RSM). The functional quadratic regression is curvature and the tested variable shows stable close data of the mean 0 and α2. Based on the Pareto analysis, the PHT and VF were key variables that significantly affected the UTS, microhardness, and density of the product. The maximum properties were achieved at an optimum PHT, PHti, and VF of 541 °C, 2.25 h, 1 vol% SiO2 and 2.13 vol% CuO, respectively. Furthermore, the morphological results of the tensile fractured surface revealed the homogenous distribution of nano-reinforced CuO and SiO2 particles in the specimens’ structure.