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EFFECT OF FRICTION STIR PROCESSING PROCESS PARAMETERS ON QUALITY CHARACTERISTICS OF AL 6063/B4C COMPOSITE

Hemant Soni, Dr. Bipin Kumar Singh


Al6063 has good surface finishing, high corrosion and resistance, is readily suited to processing has low hardness. Friction stir processing (FSP) is a novel technique used for enhancing the mechanical and metallurgical properties of the material and also to make the structural defects in the material. It eliminates the micro structural defects and porosity in the material. In this study, manufacturing of composite Al6063 and boron carbide (B4C) particles with 20-60 µm particle size were added as reinforcement. In this study, different types of tools are used (cylindrical, tapered and square).The tool shoulder is vary from 16 mm. The friction stir processing tool is made of high speed steel with a pin length 3 mm. The 16 mm shoulder diameter produces sufficient amount of heat to properly plasticize and flow of material during the FSPed process thus producing finer grain size within the nuggest zone and processes high micro-hardness of the material. The maximum micro-hardness achieved is 34.12 Hv. The micro-hardness values of the composite fabricated with square pin tool profile were higher as compare to other selected tool pin profile. The maximum tensile strength achieved is 88 MPa. In this study, at first, the optimum frictional stir processing parameters namely rotational speed, pin profile and tilt angle for production of the sound welds with adding the B4C micro particles have been investigated. B4C has unique combinational properties such as high melting point, thermal stability, extreme abrasion resistance, high hardness and low density, due to which it is a good choice as reinforcement in engineering materials. The incorporation of micro-particles can greatly improve the mechanical properties; hence can be used as reinforcement for fabrication of composites. The FSP was performed on untreated Al6063 plates with HSS tools of different probe shape. The effect of rotational speeds, different probe shapes of tool and tilt angle on microstructures and hardness were evaluated for fabricated composites. Experiment is planned according to Taguchi’s L9 OA. ANOVA is used to find out optimum processing parameters to attain uniform distribution of reinforcement particles in the composite.