Study on friction welding wear and hot deformation behavior of AZ31B magnesium alloy and nano composite

Abstract

Reducing the weight is one of the key factors in the manufacturing of newlinestructural application materials to reduce the green house gas emissions. newlineRecently magnesium has its application in consumer products, automotive and newlineaerospace industries. The density of magnesium alloys ranges from 1.74 to 1.83 newlineg/cc. A wide variety of alloy elements are used to suit different range of newlineapplications. The most important alloying ingredients used in magnesium newlinealloys are aluminum, zinc, manganese, silicon, zirconium, rare-earth metals, newlineand strontium. Researchers have also experimented by adding calcium and newlinecopper to enhance the oxidation resistance and strength. Taking the above into newlineconsideration new AZ31B magnesium alloys were developed by reinforcing newlinecalcium and nano-alumina. This research work was carried out to elucidate the newlinematerial behavior during secondary processing (friction welding and hot newlinedeformation behavior) and to study the wear behavior for the magnesium alloy and nano composite. newlineFriction welding was carried out first to predict the tensile behavior and newlinethe microstructural evolution of the magnesium nano composite of weldments. newlineThe preliminary experiments were conducted on the composite and the tensile newlinestrength of the welded samples yielded only around 75%. Inorder to get the newlineoptimal strength the experimental design was conducted using central newlinecomposite design using design expert software. For the obtained parameters newlinethe welds were performed on the pure AZ31B magnesium alloy. Using newlineresponse surface methodology the optimal tensile strength was evolved and the newlinesame has been validated with artificial neural network. With the predicted weld newlineparameter the friction welding was carried out on the magnesium nano newlinecomposite. The joint efficiencies obtained for MGAL and MGNC magnesium newlinealloys are 93.6 % and 92% respectively. The microstructural behavior for both the magnesium alloy and nano composite for the predicted process parameters newlineis reported in this work. It is observed that failure occurred away from the weld newlineregion.