Development and Wear Characterization of Graphite and Silicon Carbide Reinforced ZA-27 Metal Matrix Composite

Abstract

 HMMCs (Hybrid Metal Matrix Composites) finds its uses in automobile, aerospace, naval equipment’s and aviation due to their superior wear resistances and high strength to weight ratio. The present work is aimed to develop a ZA-27 HMMCs by varying graphite content in the steps of 2% along with 6% of silicon carbide for studying its wear resistance using Taguchi approach. L9 orthogonal array (OA) was selected and smaller the better characteristic was chosen to determine the optimum parameters for wear rate of developed ZA-27 HMMCs. Wear resistance increased gradually with the incorporation of graphite content from 2 to 6%. This effect can be attributed to self-lubricating properties offered by increasing graphite content which tends to reduce co-efficient of friction by forming a smeared thin layer of graphite on the sliding surface. Using ANOVA percentage contribution of each factors were determined to obtain optimum wear rate condition.