WEAR AND FRICTION BEHAVIOR OF AN Sic PARTICULATE REINFORCED 2124A1 COMPOSITE

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Production Engineering and Mechanical Design, Faculty of Engineering, Minoufiya University, Shebin El-Kom, Egypt

2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Higher Institute of Mechanica1 and Electrical Engineering, Hoon, LIBYA

Abstract

The present paper deals with the investigation of wear and friction characteristics of 10 vol.% Sic
particulate reinforced 2124A1 composite in addition to its unreinforced 2124Al alloy. A pin-on￾ring apparatus has been employed. The effects of the normal load, sliding speed, and sliding time
on mass loss and coefficient of friction were examined. The specific wear energy and the
activation energy were also estimated in order to gain more understanding of the mechanisms that
control wear in these materials. The present results show, for both materials, that mass loss linearly
increases with increasing normal load and sliding time. It is also observed that increasing sliding
speed leads to a complicated wear manner. The unreinforced alloy has the greater mass loss when
compared with the reinforced composite, but when increasing sliding speed, the unreinforced alloy
exhibits minimum values of mass loss. In all cases, the coefficient of friction is greater, for the
present composite, than that for the unreinforced alloy. Furthermore, wear mechanisms were
investigated and discussed in the light of microscopic observations.