LAUSR

The aim of this work is to fabricate aluminum, boron carbide (B4C) based aluminum matrix composites (AMCs) using easy and cost effective powder metallurgy (P/M) route. Here, Al–Mg–Si composites having different weight fractions of B4C (3.5,7.0,10.5,14.0 and 17.5 wt%) were synthesized to study the dry sliding wear behavior with respect to automobile brake pad material. The surface morphology and elemental composition of fabricated composite material were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) respectively. Further, dry sliding wear tests were conducted with respect to i.e. applied loads, sliding distances and reinforcements for the performance analysis of synthesized AMCs. A linear regression model was used to optimize the control factors. Furthermore, explore the effects of reinforcements on density, Vickers hardness, wear rate and worn out surface morphology. Further, the analysis also revealed the critical wear mechanisms with their wear debris for improvement in the AMCs. The hardness of aluminum composite (17.5% B4C/Al–Mg–Si) showed 54.15% higher value than matrix alloy. Furthermore, it was observed that AMCs showed significant improvement on the various factors e.g., applied load (L), sliding distances (SD) and reinforcements (R) than that of aluminium matrix alloy.