Wear 271 (2011) 27662774

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Wear
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wear

Abrasive wear behaviour of SiCp/Al alloy composite in comparison with

ausferritic ductile iron
Y. Sahin a, , V. Kilicli b
a
b

Department of Manufacturing Engineering, Faculty of Technology, Gazi University, Besevler-06500, Ankara, Turkey
Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Technology, Gazi University, Besevler-06500, Ankara, Turkey

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 13 October 2010
Received in revised form 11 May 2011
Accepted 18 May 2011
Available online 26 May 2011
Keywords:
SiC particle
Al alloy
Metal matrix composite
Ductile iron
Abrasive wear
Wear surface

a b s t r a c t
The abrasive wear behaviour of SiCp/Al composites (MMCs) prepared by liquid metallurgy method was
investigated to nd out effects of applied load and weight fraction on a pin-on-disc conguration. The
MMC pins containing 20 wt.% particles with sizes of 50 m and its 2014 Al alloy were tested under different conditions against SiC abrasives. The wear performances of MMCs were also compared with those of
ductile iron (DI), partially austenitized and austempered ductile iron (PADI) and conventionally austenitized (full austenitized) and austempered ductile iron (CADI) under similar conditions. Moreover, wear
surfaces of tested samples were examined in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Hardness, density
and porosity increased with increasing wt.% of particle for the composite, but for the PADI and CADI
sample, hardness increased with increasing martensite volume fraction and ausferrite volume fraction.
The experimental results showed that wear rate of the composite decreased slightly with increasing SiCp
contents and increased with increasing load. The wear resistance of MMCs was found to be better then
those of DI, PADI and CADI materials, when tested against 70 m sizes of abrasives. Furthermore, SEM
examination showed that a few wear craters, combined with re-attachment of debris particles, was dominant for the composite, but the fragmented debris particles, when tested at lower loads, were found the
more dominant for MMCs. Adhesion, chipping and abrasion were responsible mechanisms for the alloy,
but abrasion was the most effective mechanism for the CADI samples.
2011 Published by Elsevier B.V.

1. Introduction
Aluminium alloys are widely used in many automobile,
aerospace and mineral processing components due to their excellent combination of low density and high thermal conductivity
and high strength-to-weight ratio [1]. However, they suffer from
poor elevated temperature and tribological properties. To overcome this, hard reinforcement phases such as particulates, bres,
and whiskers are introduced into Al-based matrix for their high
specic strength, stiffness, wear resistance, fatigue resistance and
elevated temperature [2,3]. Among the reinforcements such as
SiCw, TiC, B, C and Al2 O3 , SiCp is the widely used due to its low cost,
wide range of available grades, more stable and chemical compatibility with Al matrix. It has been generally observed that increasing
the SiCp or Al2 O3 particle content enhances the wear resistance of
the base alloy [4].
There are several manufacturing techniques for particle reinforced MMCs such as squeeze casting, compo-casting, powder
metallurgy and mechanical alloying. The distributing of reinforce-

Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 312 202 8671; fax: +90 312 212 00 59.
E-mail addresses: ysahin@gazi.edu.tr (Y. Sahin), vkilicli@gazi.edu.tr (V. Kilicli).
0043-1648/$ see front matter 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V.
doi:10.1016/j.wear.2011.05.022

ment particles homogeneously in the metal matrix is a difcult

task. Moreover, despite undesirable chemical reaction, the casting
method, i.e. melt stirring process provides some advantages such
as cost efciency, good inltration, quality of chopped performs,
and offers a wide selection of materials and processing conditions
[5]. Particulate MMCs are isotropic in their properties and are easier to process via powder metallurgy or cast ranging route. Due
to low processing cost and ease of preparation, Al matrix composites with different ceramic reinforcing particles showed good
mechanical properties and wear behaviour, compared to corresponding monolithic alloys [2,6]. SiC/Al composites have recently
received particular interests due to their high specic modulus,
high strength and high thermal stability for structural materials. Therefore, the applications of these composites have been
increased in the aerospace, automobiles industry such as drive shaft
cylinder heads, pistons, discs of car brakes and jet ghter aircraft
lings, where the tribological properties of the materials are very
important [79].
Apart from MMCs, austempered ductile iron (ADI), partially
austenitized and austempered ductile iron (PADI) or ductile iron
(DI), have also attracted much attention for its excellent mechanical
properties such as high strength, toughness and excellent fatigue
strength. However, the resulting properties are strongly dependent

Y. Sahin, V. Kilicli / Wear 271 (2011) 27662774

upon the time and temperature of the austempering treatment

[10,11]. Thus, ADI has become increasingly important for the manufacturing of components such as gears, crankshafts, camshafts and
rolls, and PADIs have been found to be validated for suspension
parts of the automotive owing to its higher ductility then the conventionally heat-treated ADIs [12]. Abrasive wear occurs when hard
particles or asperities penetrate a softer surface and displace material in the form of elongated chips and slivers. Wear resistance is not
an intrinsic property of material, but depends upon the tribological
system, such as properties of materials tested, microstructure and
interface, abrasive grit size, test condition, equipment and environment [13,14]. Dry wear and abrasive wear behaviour of metal
matrix composites have been investigated by several investigators
[1546].
The following is merely a brief overview of the work reported
on the wear behaviour of composites in the literature. Mondal et al.
[25] studied the two-body abrasive wear behaviour of a cast aluminium alloy 10 wt.% Al2 O3 particle composite. They concluded
along with reinforcement size and the load and the interaction
factors were quite signicant. The abrasive wear performance of
pressure die casting Al composite reinforced with 10 wt.% SiCp
(5080 m in size) was superior to that produced with gravity casting [2]. The wear rate was primarily controlled by hardness even
though other mechanical properties inuence the wear behaviour
of the materials to some extent. Sawla and Das [26] studied the twobody abrasive wear behaviour of LM13 alloy and LM1315 wt.%
SiC composite as a function of load. It was observed that the wear
constant decreased with load, but the value of wear constant was
higher for the cast alloy than that of the heat-treated alloy and composite. Kassim et al. [27] studied the abrasion of Al/SiCp composites
fabricated by a powder metallurgy route involving a nal hot
extrusion step, with Al 1100 matrix and -SiC reinforcement with
mean size of 10, 27 and 43 m. The abrasion resistance increased
with an increase in the volume fraction and size of SiC particles.
Wilson and Ball [28] studied the abrasion wear resistance of the
AA6061/20 vol.% SiCp composite in short sliding distance testing
(about 20 m). There was a clear transition in wear mechanism with
the use of ner abrasive grit sizes. As abrasive particle size reduced,
the wear resistance of composites improved due to plastic deformation and cutting of the matrix, without SiCp fracture. On the
contrary, in the case of large abrasive particles whose size was
larger then the interparticle spacing, fracture and removal of SiCp
took place. Kiourtsidis and Skolianos [29] studied the abrasion wear
behaviour of T6 AA2024/40 m-SiCp composites reinforced up to
24 vol.%. The composites wear resistant improved with increasing
SiCp content in both the peak-aged (PA) and over-aged (OA) condition. The effect of particles size in T6 AA6061 alloy reinforced
with SiC and Al2 O3 particles was investigated by Zhang et al. [30].
The wear performance of ne particle reinforced composites was
associated with matrix hardness while the wear rate of large particle reinforced composites was related to both matrix hardness and
fracture of the particles.
Wang and Hutchings [31] studied the two-body abrasion wear
in relation to an Al6061 alloy reinforced with the Al2 O3 bres
against SiC paper. With the larger abrasive particles, the wear resistance decreased with average bres volume fractions (20 vol.%) and
the worn surface revealed bres fracture and extensive deboning
at the bres matrix interface. Sheu and Lin [32] studied the effect
of particle size on the abrasive wear of the Al alloy composites containing 1030% Al2 O3 bres, worn on SiC and int grains. The results
showed that abrasive wear of the composite increased with increasing the abrasive grain size and load. Candan et al. [33] studied the
inuence of low contact stress, the deleterious wear mechanism
was the digging out of SiCp from the Al matrix by the ploughing
action of the abrasive grains. In the case of large abrasive grains,
wear resistance of Al/13 m composites was now higher then that

2767

of large SiCp reinforced composites. Bindumadhavan et al. [34]

examined the wear performance of DPS (dual particle size) 47 and
120 m SiCp composites against SPS (single particle size) 47 m
SiCp composites and the higher load bearing capacity of the larger
SiCp resulted in the protection of the smaller ones giving to DPS a
better wear performance then that of SPS composites.
Sahin [35] carried out the abrasive wear test on Al2011 alloy
with 510 wt.% SiCp content with 3264 m particle size, using
factorial designs of experiments. The wear rate increased with
increasing the abrasive size, load and sliding distance when SiC
paper was used. However, the wear rate increased with increasing
the abrasive size, load and, decreased with sliding distance when
Al2 O3 emery paper was selected. A similar study was carried out
on the MMCs experimentally [4,13,36]. The results showed that the
introduction of SiC particles in the matrix alloy exerted the greatest effect on the abrasive wear, followed by load. It is also reported
that MMCs were tested under different conditions [37,38]. Last two
results indicated that the abrasive grain size was the major parameter on the abrasive wear, followed by the wt.% reinforcement and
reinforcement size, respectively [39,40]. However, Modi et al. [41]
showed that that the effect of applied load on the wear rate of both
zinc alloy and the 10 wt.% Al2 O3 particle reinforced composite was
more severe as compared to that of the abrasive size at different
loads. Tjong and Lan [42] found that the addition of only 5 vol.% TiB2
particle to copper led to a dramatic improvement in its wear resistance. Colaco and Vilar [43] developed a model for the abrasive wear
of metallic matrix reinforced materials. The model was based on a
generalization to multiphase materials of Rabinowicz equation, by
considering separately the contributions of the reinforcement particles and of the matrix to material loss. Deuis et al. [44] reported
that the controlling factors in composites wear; are the abrasive
grit size, hardness of the wearing surface in relation to that of the
abrasive materials and reinforcements mean path in MMCs in addition to the fracture toughness of ceramic reinforcements. The wear
performance of MMC and its coating were inuenced by the type,
size and volume fraction of the reinforcement phase and the wear
environment [45,46].
From the literature review, it is seen that most of the studies
has focused on the experimental work for abrasive wear behaviour
of composites [2,4,5,2546], and DIs [4753], but there are a few
works related to comparison of abrasive wear of MMCs with some
other materials like high cast iron and intermetallic compounds
[29,45,53]. The aim of the present study is, therefore, to investigate
the abrasive wear behaviour of SiCp reinforced Al alloy composites
in terms of abrasive particle size, weight fraction and applied load
in pin-on-disc type of wear machine. Moreover, a comparison is
made with DI, PADI and CADIs under the same testing conditions.
Furthermore, wear surfaces of MMCs and of their matrix alloy in
addition to DI based materials are also examined in a SEM.

2. Experimental details
2.1. Materials
For the fabrication of 20 wt.% SiCp-reinforced MMCs, 2014 Al
alloy was used as the matrix material while SiC particles with an
average size of 50 m were used as the reinforcement materials.
The matrix alloy used in this study was widely used 2014 aluminium alloy containing 0.8% Si, 4.2% Cu, 0.7% Mn, 0.6% Mg and
balance Al. The composites were fabricated by a molten metal of
AlCu alloy using an electric induction furnace which is 2 kW power
under protected argon gas. For manufacturing MMCs, melting process was carried out in a crucible made from graphite while mixing
process was conducted with a graphite mixer. The graphite mixer
was inserted into in a crucible when the melt temperature reached

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Y. Sahin, V. Kilicli / Wear 271 (2011) 27662774

to 500 C. The temperature control of electric furnace and molten

metal is carried out by NR911 type thermostat provided by NEL
Inc. The mixer was xed on the mandrel of the drilling machine,
started to stir the molten metal at about 670 rev/min speeds after
completing the matrix alloy. The SiC particles were inserted onto
the aluminium foil by forming a packet. After completing the particle addition, the molten mixture was poured in the pre-heated
mould made from cast iron from bottom of the furnace. Details of
the production method are given elsewhere [4,11].
The ductile iron (DI) was produced in a medium frequency
induction furnace in a commercial foundry. Samples from the bottom section of Y block of as-cast structure were intercritically
annealed at various temperatures of 795 and 815 C for 20 min.
The specimens were coded according to starting microstructure
and partially austenitizing temperature like A795, A815. It is also
called as a partially austenitized and austempered ductile iron
(PADI). The conventionally austempered sample was also coded
as a C900 or CADI. The cast samples were heat-treated at the
conventional austenitizing temperature of 900 C in austenitic
single-phase region () for 60 min and then rapidly transforming
to austempering temperature at 365 C and holding at this temperature for various times and then air cooling to room temperature.
More detailed information on the production and mechanical properties can be found in the previous work [10].

2.2. Abrasion wear test

A pin-on-disc type of apparatus was employed to evaluate the
wear characteristics of MMCs. The emery paper was xed to a
12 mm thick, and 160 mm diameter steel wheel to serve as the
abrasive medium. The composite bars were machined into small
cylindrical shapes for using electrical wire machining in a pin-ondisc wear testing. The wear pin specimens made from the MMCs
were approximately 5 mm in length, too short to t into a standard
wear machine. To form a pin of the necessary length, the cylinders
were bonded adhesively to a 50 mm long steel extension pin of the
same diameter using an epoxy adhesive, with a brass sleeve tted
over the joint for extra strength. The pin was then mounted in a
steel holder in the wear machine so that it was held rmly perpendicular to that of the at surface of the rotating counter disc when
tested. The samples were loaded against the abrasive medium by
a cantilever mechanism. Wear tests were performed at room temperature. The specimens experienced to continuous motion while
the abrasive changed its position by the time (1 min) the specimen
completed its cycle.
The disc surface is regularly and thoroughly cleaned by acetone
prior to and after wear testing. The wear tests were carried out both
in dry conditions at different loads and for a xed sliding distance.
The track radius has been kept at 90 mm in length. The width of the
wear track was 6.5 mm. The track radius was measured to be the
distance between the centre of the disc and the central point of the
track. A systematic view of the testing machine is shown in Fig. 1.
The specimen surfaces were ground well prior to initiating the wear
tests and subjected to few runs against the counter surface at slow
speed and low load for establishing intimate contact between the
two matting surfaces.
The composites were tested against SiC abrasive papers. In each
of these tests, the surface of the specimen was adjusted to completely contact with abrasive particles before the abrasion test. The
specimen of 6.4 mm in diameter with a surface area of 40.9 mm2
for the composites was abraded under different loads against 180
grits of SiC abrasives. This grit corresponds to 70 m. After the
test, the wear pin was cleaned in acetone prior to and after the
wear tests, then dried after that weighed on a micro-balance with
0.1 mg sensitiveness.

Fig. 1. Schematic view of the pin-on-disc test procedure.

In the tests, normal load on the pin was variable at a constant

sliding speed of 0.8 m s1 and the sliding distance was 48 m. Each
test was performed with a new abrasive paper and was repeated
for three times and the average was used. All the tests were performed with a range of loads from 8 N to 32 N. Wear losses were
obtained by detecting the mass loss of the samples before and after
the wear tests. The wear rates were calculated by converting the
mass loss measurements to volume loss by using the respective
densities [4]. Specimens for metallographic observation were prepared by grinding through 800 grit papers followed by polishing
with 6 m diamond pastes.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Microstructure
Fig. 2 shows the optical micrograph of the aluminium composite reinforced with a 20 wt.% of SiC particle and 50 m in size. No
evidence of the presence of cavities at interface in the matrix was
found. The distribution of SiC particles in these composites was
also uniform. The SiC particles (black colour) were observed to be
angular in shape. This gure indicates that apart from the large SiC

Fig. 2. Microstructure of 50 m 20 wt.% SiCp reinforced 2014 Al composite.

Y. Sahin, V. Kilicli / Wear 271 (2011) 27662774

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Table 1
Some mechanical and physical properties of Al alloy and its composite.
Types of materials and their designations

Weight fraction (wt.%)

Density (kg/m3 )

Porosity (%)

Hardness (BHN)

Al-2014 alloy
50 m-SiCp + Al-2014 alloy
50 m-SiCp + Al-2014 alloy

0
10
20

2770
2800
2830

1.07
1.234
1.40

79
105
124

Fig. 3. Microstructure of C900 conventional sample austenitized at 900 C for 90 min

and then, austempered at 365 C for a time of 60 min.

particles, ne SiC particles are present due to fracturing of particles

during mixing process. Some mechanical and physical properties
obtained for the Al alloy and its composite are given in Table 1. The
hardness increased with increasing contents and sizes of ceramic
particles in the composites.
The nominal composition of ductile iron is (wt.%): 3.42 C; 2.63
Si; 0.318 Mn; 0.031 Cr; 0.0423 Ni; 0.0471 Mg and the balance Fe.
The microstructure of as-cast material had ferrite graphite structure [10]. Fig. 3 shows the microstructure of C900 conventional
sample austenitized at 900 C for 90 min and then, austempered
at 365 C for a time of 60 min etched with 2% nital. M letter in
this micrograph indicates Martensite. The microstructure of conventional the C900 samples with it is nearly wholly ausferritic
structure throughout the specimen. This micrograph also revealed
that there were graphites in the shape of spheroidal (black) distributed throughout the whole sample. The mechanical properties
and some metallographic measurements obtained for each heat
treatment conditions are shown in Table 2. The hardness increased
with increasing AFVF or with increasing martensite volume fraction. The C900 sample with highest AFVF had the highest hardness
value among the austempered samples.
3.2. Wear behaviour
Fig. 4 shows the variation of average volumetric wear rates of the
Al alloy matrix and its 10 wt.% and 20 wt.% SiCp reinforced composites with 50 m particle sizes as a function of applied load. These
materials were tested against 70 m size of abrasive. It was noted
that the wear rate of the composite was less then that of the alloy
Table 2
Some metallographic and mechanical properties of different DI based materials [10].
Sample codes

Ausferrite volume
fraction (%)

Martensite volume
fraction (%)

Hardness (BHN)

As cast (DI)
A 795 (PADI)
A 815 (PADI)
C 900 (CADI)

10.5
23.6
37.5

14.3
38.2
52.3

168
203
251
327

Fig. 4. Average volumetric wear rate as a function of applied load for the alloy matrix
and its SiCp reinforced composite, tested against 70 m size of abrasive.

irrespective of all applied loads. For the composite, the hard reinforcing SiC particles could be resisted against the micro cutting
action of abrasives, and the lowest wear rate was obtained for the
20 wt.% SiCp reinforced composite then that of the 10 wt.% SiCp
reinforced composite, but no signicant differences were observed
between them due to a similar responsible mechanism during
abrasive wear (Fig. 4 and Table 3). Furthermore, it was evident
from gure that in the case of both alloy and the composite wear
rate increased with increasing loads against xed abrasive sizes.
Another reason was that the reinforcement particle of the 50 m
used for making MMCs was relatively small in compared to the
70 m size of SiC abrasive. However, increasing trends in the wear
rates, especially for the higher wt.% SiC particles was less (Table 3).
For the purpose of comparison, wear rates of DI, PADI and CADIs
were tested under the same testing conditions, and the average volumetric wear rate of these materials are determined graphically in
Fig. 5. This gure shows the variation of average volumetric wear
rate as a function of applied load for DI, PADI and CADIs, tested
against the 70 m size of abrasive. It was observed that for all
the materials tested wear rate increased linearly as load increased.
Again, the CADI sample exhibited the lowest wear rate then those of
DI and PADI samples (Table 4) since these samples had the highest
hardness and lowest ductility then those of other tested samples
(Table 2). A comparison of Figs. 4 and 5 showed that the lowest wear
rate was obtained for the MMC then that of CADI sample. This was
probably due to the use of the 70 m size of abrasive because the
penetration ability of abrasives and depthness decreased considerably against MMCs. The formation of wear mechanism was another
reason for behind this event, as will be observed in the upcoming
section of wear surface analysis. There were some differences in the
wear rates between CADIs and MMCs, when tested at various loads
against the same size of abrasive. For example, the wear rates were
about 0.212 mm3 /m and 0.314 mm3 /m, when tested at 32 N load,
for the 50 m 20 wt.% SiCp composite and CADIs, respectively.

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Y. Sahin, V. Kilicli / Wear 271 (2011) 27662774

Table 3
Average wear rate of the alloy and its MMC, tested at 70 m abrasive grits.
Load (N)

Average wear rate of MMCs, tested at 70 m grits (mm3 /m)

Types of tested materials
10 wt.% 50 m-SiCp-reinforced MMCs

20 wt.% 50 m-SiCp-reinforced MMCs

2nd run

3rd run

1st run

2nd run

3rd run

1st run

2nd run

3rd run

0.45
0.866
1.410
1.432

0.474
0.0922
1.350
1.456

0.132
0.1785
0.2014
0.265

0.156
0.20
0.212
0.297

0.113
0.155
0.009
0.232

0.092
0.1485
0.182
0.2125

0.103
0.141
0.164
0.236

0.089
0.156
0.202
0.179

2014 Al alloy
1st run
8
16
24
32

0.431
0.904
1.289
1.556

Fig. 5. Average volumetric wear rate as a function of applied load for DI, PADI and
CADIs, tested against 70 m size of abrasive.

For the A815 sample, wear rate was found to be about

0.53 mm3 /mm at the same load. In other words, the wear rate of
the 20 wt.% SiCp composite was 1.52 times less then that of the
CADIs, tested at 16 N load. It meant that the selection of the composites became a very favourable when such an abrasive was used.
In order to understand the behind wear behaviour of these tested
materials, wear surfaces were examined by SEM in the following
section.
Standard deviation in general increased with increasing load.
It was more obvious for the Al alloy, especially for 24 N and 32 N
load, respectively (see Fig. 4). It might be due to forming a higher
temperature between the matrix and disc, and resulted in more
delamination, abrasive grooves and craters (see Figs. 6a and 7b).
In the case of the composite, standard deviation was slightly lower
because introduction of ceramic particles into the matrix increased
the hardness of the matrix and changed the wear mechanism. So,
hard abrasion ne particles covered the surface and caused the less

Fig. 6. Wear surface of the unreinforced alloy pin specimen tested at: (a) 8 N load
against 70 m size of abrasive, showing continuous grooves and (b) higher magnication of Fig. 6a, indicating a deformed region and some re-attachment of particles
over the base alloy of the pin surface. The sliding direction top to down.

damage by protecting the surface of specimen (see Figs. 8 and 9). It

was found that the error calculated by using the difference between
the experimental data of wear rates was about 10% even at the
higher load conditions for the matrix alloy. Thus, the standard devi-

Table 4
Average wear rate of DI, PADI and CADIs, tested at 70 m abrasive grits.
Load (N)

Average of wear rate of DI, PADI and CADIs tested at 70 m grits (mm3 /m)
Types of tested materials
As cast
1st run

8
16
24
32

0.261
0.413
0.534
0.597

A-795

A-815

C-900

2nd run

3rd run

1st run

2nd run

3rd run

1st run

2nd run

3rd run

1st run

2nd run

3rd run

0.246
0.403
0.547
0.576

0.288
0.434
0.516
0.612

0.2429
0.366
0.4979
0.55

0.254
0.392
0.524
0.574

0.228
0.345
0.483
0.533

0.1895
0.3379
0.477
0.521

0.182
0.352
0.507
0.504

0.20
0.313
0.45
0.556

0.1187
0.225
0.269
0.314

0.123
0.234
0.252
0.331

0.115
0.218
0.278
0.297

Y. Sahin, V. Kilicli / Wear 271 (2011) 27662774

Fig. 7. Wear surface of the Al alloy pin specimen tested at: (a) 32 N load against
70 m size of abrasive, showing a smooth surface and (b) higher magnication,
indicating some craters and some sticking of particles over the pin surface. The
sliding direction from down to top.

ation is within the condence limit. Engineering materials like DI,

PADI and CADI also showed more stable behaviour in comparison
to the matrix alloy, as shown in Figs. 4 and 5. Furthermore, deviation in Fig. 5 increased with load, but decreased with increasing
the hardness of both types of tested samples.

3.3. Surface observations

The worn ends of some of the wear pins were cut off and examined in the SEM in order to study the morphology of the wear
surfaces. Fig. 6 shows the wear surface of the unreinforced Al alloy,
tested at a sliding distance of 48 m under 8 N load, imaged in SE
mode. This low magnication micrograph revealed that continuous grooves had formed on the surface of the pin. It was observed
that some re-attachment of particles occurred on the pin surface. A
magnied view of Fig. 6a is shown in Fig. 6b, which clearly shows
the particles attached along with the damaged region. Additionally, edge chipping and oxidized sticking particles were evident in
both micrographs. Fig. 6 shows the wear surface of the Al alloy pin
specimen tested at 32 N load against the 70 m size of abrasive. A
similar wear surface was observed for this case. However, it might
be observed that the extent of damaged regions and continuous
grooves in this case (Fig. 7a) was less then that of the loading at 8 N
(Fig. 6). Moreover, more debris particles are attached to the wearing
surface. Higher magnication of Fig. 7b indicates that small amount
of craters and some sticking of particles over the pin surface were
observed due to generation of heat during the abrasive process. It
is worth mentioning that the presence of size of micro-grooving or

2771

Fig. 8. Wear surface of the 50 m 20 wt % SiCp composite pin specimen tested

at: (a) 8 N load against 70 m size of abrasive, showing a smooth surface but covered with fragmentations of the ne abrasive particles and (b) higher magnication,
indicating a reattachment of debris particles and a few craters over the surface. The
sliding direction from top to down.

depth of damage was found to be signicantly less in this case then

the case of samples tested at relatively lower loads.
Fig. 8 shows the worn surface of the 20 wt.% SiCp reinforced composite with 50 m particle size, tested at a load of 8 N against the
70 m abrasive grits. This low magnication micrograph exhibited
a smooth surface but it was covered with fragmented debris particles on the pin surface due to fracturing of ceramic particles within
small sizes. This is better shown in the SE image of higher magnication in Fig. 8b. The size of debris particles attached to the surface
is about 28 m. A few of craters are visible on the pin surface, and
these wear craters were usually in the region of particle clusters.
This small number of craters might be a reason of the decreasing the
penetration ability of SiC abrasives against the 20 wt.% SiC particles.
It is also an indication of enough interfaces bonding between SiC
particle and alloy matrix. Thus, the depth of cut was not so deep. On
the other hand, a third body was presented at the interface surface
(Fig. 8a and b). This might be the retained debris particles from
the previous wear events or abrasion particles. This type of wear
resulted in decrease in the wear rate as the abrasive particle size
and shape changed.
Fig. 9 shows the wear surface of the composite pin with the same
particle size, but tested at a load of 32 N. Worn surface of the composite possessed a relatively smooth appearance. It also showed
that there was no extensive damaged region on the pin surface due
to more contents of reinforcement particles in the matrix despite
higher load. It is an indication of enough bonding between the particle and matrix. A higher magnication of Fig. 9a is shown in Fig. 9b.
Moreover, this micrograph shows a few craters and embedded par-

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Y. Sahin, V. Kilicli / Wear 271 (2011) 27662774

Fig. 9. Wear surface of the 50 m 20 wt.% SiCp composite pin specimen tested
at: (a) 32 N load against 70 m size of abrasive, showing a very smooth surface and
(b) higher magnication, exhibiting a few craters combined with re-attachment of
debris particles. The sliding direction from top to down.

ticles over the wear surface because of fracturing and removal of

some particles. Under the applied loading condition, a smooth surface was observed due to the reduction in frictional forces on the
wear surface. No considerable amount of oxidized particles over
the pin surface was observed.
Depth and width of the grooves not only depended on the size
of SiC particles chosen in the composite, but also on the abrasive
sizes used against the MMCs. The hard reinforced particles reduced
the extent of penetration of the abrasive particles on the specimen surface, thereby protecting the softer matrix surrounding the
hard second phase. The materials hardness determined the depth
of indentation of the abrasive particles, thus inuencing the relative
penetration depth value [40,44]. The wear resistance of the composite improved because of not fracturing so much big particles, as
evidenced in Figs. 810. MMCs indicated a lower wear rate then that
of DIs based materials at the 70 m size of abrasive particle, since
fracture and removal of SiC particles in the composites occurred
not easily since interparticle spacing was smaller. However, even a
smaller size of abrasives had abilities in digging out of the surface
of these engineering materials like DI, PADI and CADIs. It is in good
agreement with Wilson and Ball [28]. The previous studies carried
out by Sahin [3,4,13], Kiortsidis and Skolianos [29], Candan et al.
[33], Bindumadhavan et al. [34] and Sahin and Ozdin [36] showed
that the large particles in the composites bore the most of the wear
load. However, it was opposite the work carried out on aluminium
based composite by Wilson and Ball [28], Zhang et al. [30], Wang
and Hutchings [31] and Sheu and Lin [32].
Fig. 10 shows the wear surface of the C900 sample, tested at the
same loads and particle sizes, as tested in the previous samples.

Fig. 10. Wear surface of the C900 pin specimen tested at: (a) 8 N load, showing
ne continuous abrasive grooves and (b) higher magnication of Fig. 10a, showing
abrasive grooves and oxidized particles sticking to the surface. The sliding direction
top to down.

Fig. 10a shows continuous grooves throughout the sample. These

grooves were caused by the ploughing action of hard asperities on
the emery paper. It is exhibited that the hard materials were tested.
On the other hand, this sample contained about 90% martensite
volume fraction. Therefore, its hardness is about 327 BHN compared to the cast sample, which is about 168 BHN. A different form
of wear surface was observed for the C900 sample, compared to
the MMCs. The wear debris formed at this load had a tendency to
stick to the wearing surface. An increased view of this sample is
shown in Fig. 10b. This micrograph indicated the abrasive grooves
and oxidized particles sticking to the surface more clearly.
Fig. 11a shows the wear surface of the C900 pin specimen tested
at 32 N load, showing a relatively smooth surface with ne abrasive grooves. A higher magnication of Fig. 11b shows a smooth
surface, but combined with some continuous abrasive grooves. Furthermore, it is seen that the wear surface of the pin in Fig. 11a is
smoother then that of Fig. 10a, which is caused by the increase in the
load. The graphite nodule was also covered with a deformed layer
because of the increased load. This micrograph revealed that there
were graphites (black colour) distributed throughout the rubbing
surface and some oxidized debris particles were reattached to the
pin surface due to generating of heat at the interface and repeated
processes. These debris particles were found to be small equiaxed
particles. The abrasive groove width in this specimen was too small.
On the contrary, wearing groove width of the pin specimen from
the alloy was about 50 m or even higher (Fig. 6).
The previous work showed that applied load and hardness were
most important factors affecting the abrasion wear process [47]. It

Y. Sahin, V. Kilicli / Wear 271 (2011) 27662774

2773

Furthermore, SEM examination indicated that a relatively small

amount of wear craters, combined with re-attachment of debris
particles due to occurring the small amount of fractured particles
in MMCs because the 70 m sized abrasives were used against the
composite reinforced with the 50 m size. For lower loads, however, fragmentation or pulverization sticking to the wear surface in
addition to the strong adhesion on the wear surface was effective
for MMCs, which led to a greater number of sticking abrasive particles. In general, smoothening mechanism was observed for both
types of materials under higher loads as well. Moreover; adhesion,
chipping and abrasion were more obviously observed for the alloy
matrix, but the abrasion became the most effective for the CADI
sample.

References

Fig. 11. Wear surface of the C900 pin specimen tested at: (a) 32 N load, showing a
relatively smooth surface with ne abrasive grooves and (b) higher magnication
of Fig. 11a showing a smooth surface but combined with some continuous abrasive
grooves. The sliding direction from top to down.

is true for the DI, PADI and CADI samples. For the MMCs, however,
the microstructure and formation of wear mechanisms became a
dominant factor for the wear behaviour. In the current study, the
abrasive wear behaviour of SiCp reinforced Al alloy composites was
investigated in terms of weight fraction and applied load. A comparison of abrasive wear of MMCs was made with different DIs
under the same testing conditions. The MMCs showed a better performance due to the microstructure of the MMCs consisting of hard
ceramic particles in a macro-scale then those of the microstructure
of DI, PADI and CADIs comprising of ferrite graphite, ferrite, ausferrite or martensite in an atomic-scale. A lower wear was obtained for
MMCs despite the fact that its hardnesss of MMCs was much lower
then those of the PADI and CADI samples (Table 3). To summarize;
microstructure and size of SiC particles in the matrix (50 m)
and size of abrasive particles (70 m) in addition to formations of
wear mechanisms were found to be the dominant factors for both
abrasive wear behaviour of MMCs, and DI based materials for this
study.
4. Conclusions
The experimental results demonstrated that the addition of the
20 wt.% SiC particle to the Al alloy led to a dramatic improvement in wear resistance of the base alloy. The wear resistance
of MMCs was found to be better then those of DI, its alloy and
heat-treated samples, tested at the 70 m size of abrasive. The
wear resistance increased with increasing wt.% particles for MMCs
and martensite volume fractions for PADI and CADIs, respectively.

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