Experimental investigations on properties and machinability of titanium dioxide reinforced aa7075 matrix composites

Abstract

In recent decades, Metal Matrix Composites (MMCs) areextensively used in many industrial applications due to its uniquecombinations of properties. Aluminium and its alloys have received majorattention as matrix material for MMCs. Aluminium Matrix Composites(AMCs) are emerging as very promising materials especially in the fields ofaerospace, automotive, marine and defence applications, gradually replacingthe number of conventional engineering materials. AMCs are gaining moreimportance because of their favorable properties like high specific strength,high specific stiffness, good wear resistance, excellent corrosion resistance,high elastic modulus, low thermal expansion coefficient and light weight.AMCs produced by adding several kinds of reinforcement in the form ofcarbides, oxides, borides and nitrides. Among the oxides, titanium dioxide(TiO2) is reinforced in the aluminium matrix composites to enhance themechanical and tribological properties. Among the various techniquesadopted for the manufacturing of particulate reinforced AMCs, stir castingtechnique has its own advantages such as ease of manufacturing, lowermanufacturing cost, uniform distribution of reinforcements throughout thematrix due to stirring action.In the present study, aluminium alloy (AA7075) matrix compositesreinforced with varying weight percentage of (0, 5, 10 and 15wt.%) TiO2reinforcement particles were produced by stir casting method. The produced newlinecomposites were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM),energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis.It is evident that the presence of reinforcement particles uniformly distributedin the matrix alloy and also XRD analysis confirmed the no otherintermetallic phases are found in the produced composites. newline newline