Experimental Analysis of Temperature and Nanoparticles Content Effect on Properties of Al6061-SiC Nanocomposite Samples Fabricated by Warm Dynamic Compaction

Warm dynamic compaction is one of the powder metallurgical techniques for the production of composites and materials with high level of work hardening. In this paper, samples were produced using warm dynamic compaction method and statistical analysis was carried out to investigate the effects of temperature and volume fraction of nanoparticles on Al6061-SiC green samples. For this purpose, monolithic and composite samples containing various volume fractions of nanoparticles were compacted dynamically. The green cylindrical compacts with approximate diameter of 15 mm and the height of 10 mm were then ejected from the solid die and their properties such as density, ejection force, spring-back, micro hardness and hardness distribution within the compacts were evaluated. Nonlinear regression and response surface development was then carried out to analyze the influence of temperature and volume fraction of nanoparticles on properties of green samples. The results show that the compaction temperature has the greatest effect on green properties in comparison with nanoparticles content. Despite of hardness reduction, increasing compaction temperature leads to counterbalance the counteractive effects of adding nanoparticles on density reduction and increase of ejection force and heterogeneity.