Wear Behaviour and Surface Analysis of Hybrid Al 6061 Composites Reinforced with Tungsten Carbide and Fly Ash

The experimental investigation explores the tribological behaviour of Al 6061 reinforced with a hybrid composition of Tungsten carbide and Fly ash. Al 6061's attributes, such as cost effectiveness and lightweight, are determined to be suitable in most applications. Tungsten carbide reinforcement enhances the strength and hardness of the material, while Fly acts as a lubricant and enhances the wear resistance of the material.The experimentation investigates the wear behaviour of the hybrid Al 6061 composites with varying composition of Tungsten Carbide by increasing steps of 3wt%, varying from 1wt% to 7wt% and 2 wt% constant reinforcement composition of Fly ash to form a combined reinforcement composition of 3wt%, 6wt% and 9wt% respectively. The hybrid Al 6061 composite specimens are subjected to 3-body abrasive wear behaviour with silica particles of 212μm size as abrading material. The investigation reveals that the hybrid composition with 6wt% reinforcement exhibits maximum wear resistance, and further increase in the composition leads to an increase in wear loss due to debonding of particulates as a result of an increase in brittleness in the material with the increase in the presence of higher percentages of particulate reinforcement. Henceforth, the hybrid composition of 94wt% base material, 4wt% Tungsten carbide and 2wt% fly ash is identified as the optimal combination resulting in high wear resistance. The volume loss for the optimum combination is found to be 0.075gm, 0.095gm and 0.2156gm for the loads, 11N, 53N and 102N, respectively. The SEM images reveal the presence of wear tracks, material deformation and surface morphology as a result of variation in the applied load and interaction of abrasive particles on the surface of the hybrid material. Major Findings: The optimal combination of 4wt% Tungsten carbide and 2wt% fly ash with Al6061 base material results in enhanced wear resistance compared to other compositions. The wear resistance increases with an increase in composition up to 6wt%.