Wear behaviour of aluminium matrix composites (LM25/Fly Ash) – A Taguchi approach

Abstract

Composite materials are mixtures of two or more materials with different chemical and physical properties. Various techniques are followed in the fabrication of composites materials; the most simple and less cost technique is Stir casting technique. Here the samples were prepared by stir casting technique with Aluminium cast alloy (LM25) as the matrix material and fly ash of (3, 6, 9% by wt) as the reinforcement material. In this paper Taguchi technique is opted for optimizing the wear characteristic-Specific Wear Rate (SWR). Experiments were carried out by using L27 Orthogonal array and the experimental factors are Load (L), Sliding Speed (S), Sliding Distance (D) and Reinforcement (R). ANOVA was carried out to find the most significant factor and percentage of contribution of each process parameters. To test the tribological properties of composites, pin on disk wear test under dry sliding conditions were carried out for the samples. Load has the largest statistical impact on SWR (38.5%) followed by sliding speed (18.72%). Confirmation tests were performed, to validate the optimization technique.