Study on Wear Property of MWCNT's reinforced with Aluminium 2024 Metal Matrix Composites with Nickel Coating

Abstract

Various metal matrix composites (MMCs) are widely used in the automotive, aerospace and electrical industries due to their capability and flexibility in improving the mechanical, thermal and electrical properties of a component. However, current manufacturing technologies may suffer from insufficient process stability, reliability and inadequate economic efficiency and may not be able to satisfy the increasing demands placed on MMCs. So CNT based Aluminium based metal matrix composites (MMCs) has been a better choice for the industrial applications due to their Inherent properties like ductile, highly conductive, lightweight and have a high strength to weight ratio. In this study, Multiwall carbon nanotube(MWCNT) which is emerged as an excellent reinforcement material and 2024 aluminium alloy being a matrix material were selected for the development of MMC‟s. Stir casting process being a low cost casting technology which has potential to produce MMCs having agility to large scale production with great manufacturing flexibility, quality and high efficiency. In this work, The experimental investigation of CNT reinforced 2024 Aluminium MMCs under Stir casting technique were explored. Casted samples were prepared with different wt. % of reinforcements(i.e. 0.5 %, 1.0%, 1.5% & 2 % CNT‟s with 40micron nickel coating on the surface using electro-less plating process) and compared with unreinforced aluminium specimens for the investigation of Wear properties has been evaluated as per ASTM standard.