COMPARATIVE STUDIES ON MECHANICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GRANULATED BLAST FURNACE SLAG AND FLY ASH REINFORCED ALUMINIUM COMPOSITES

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1 International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology (IJMET) Volume 8, Issue 11, November 2017, pp , Article ID: IJMET_08_11_030 Available online at ISSN Print: and ISSN Online: IAEME Publication Scopus Indexed COMPARATIVE STUDIES ON MECHANICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GRANULATED BLAST FURNACE SLAG AND FLY ASH REINFORCED ALUMINIUM COMPOSITES J. Manoj Kumar Assistant Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, S R Engineering College, Warangal Telangana, India N. Gopikrishna Assistant Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, S R Engineering College, Warangal Telangana, India ABSTRACT The main objective of the research work is to cast and test the Aluminum-Fly ash & Aluminium-Granular Blast Furnace Slag composite materials for various properties. There are various theoretical and experimental methods to find the solutions of such Problems but limited to certain shapes and loading conditions. The impact strength, hardness is found experimentally on impact testing machine, hardness testing machine respectively. In this research, mechanical properties of granulated blast furnace slag, ash reinforced Al alloy and Fly ash reinforced Al alloy have been studied and a comparison has been made among the mechanical properties of both granulated blast furnace ash reinforced Al alloy and Fly ash reinforced Al alloy. Typical Microstructures of both granulated blast furnace ash reinforced Al alloy and Fly ash reinforced Al alloy have been drawn and investigated. Results have been created zeal in observations. Key words: Mechanical Characteristics, Fly Ash, Reinforced Aluminium Composites, Furnace Slag Cite this Article: J. Manoj Kumar and N. Gopikrishna, Comparative Studies on Mechanical Characteristics of Granulated Blast Furnace Slag and Fly Ash Reinforced Aluminium Composites, International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology 8(11), 2017, pp INTRODUCTION The technology has progressed to a stage where newer aluminum alloy materials are being considered, on an experimental basis for numerous applications of various fields such as editor@iaeme.com

2 J. Manoj Kumar and N. Gopikrishna aircraft, satellite launching vehicles, rocket missiles, railways, automobiles, energy, construction, medical, biomedical, marine, sports etc. The conventional materials may not always be capable of meeting the demands of such environments. Hence new materials are being created for meeting these performance requirements and Aluminum alloy materials from one class of such materials are developed. Aluminum alloys and its composites are the most widely used engineering materials next to iron and steel because of their functional and economically competitiveness. In this research, mechanical properties of granulated blast furnace slag, ash reinforced Al alloy and Fly ash reinforced Al alloy have been studied and a comparison has been made among the mechanical properties of both granulated blast furnace ash reinforced Al alloy and Fly ash reinforced Al alloy. Typical Microstructures of both granulated blast furnace ash reinforced Al alloy and Fly ash reinforced Al alloy have been drawn and investigated. Results have been created zeal in observations. 2. LITERATURE SURVEY Rohatgi, P.K. (2001) Cast Metal Matrix Composites Past, Present and Future. In: Invited Silver Anniversary Lecture by American Foundry Society, drawn all parts of the metal matrix composites and made an investigations and clear observations in his research analysis made [1]. D. Srikanth Rao et al. and N. Gopikrishna et al. (2017) investigated and evaluated the strain energy release rate of epoxy glass fibre laminate. N. Gopikrishna et al. and D. Srikanth Rao et al. (2017) made an Evaluation of Mode-I Fracture Toughness of Epoxy-Glass Fiber Composite Laminate [2]. Rohatgi, P.K., Gupta, N. and Daoud, A. (2008) Synthesis and Processing of Cast Metal Matrix Composites and Their Applications in his journal he made an observation on processing of cast Metal matrix composites [3]. N. Gopikrishna et al. and D. Srikanth Rao et al. (2017) made an Evaluation of Mode-I Fracture Toughness of Epoxy-Glass Fiber Composite Laminate [4]. Weiss, D. (1996) his paper work reveals in Using Metal Matrix Composite Castings. Processing, Properties and Applications of Cast Metal Matrix Composites [5]. Rohatgi, P.K., Guo, R.Q., Huang, P. and Ray, S. (1997) Friction and Abrasion Resistance of Cast Aluminum Alloy-Fly Ash Composites. Metallurgical and Materials Transactions [6]. Natarajan, N., Vijayarangan, S. and Rajendran, I. (2006) Wear Behaviour of A356/25SiCp Aluminium Matrix Composites Sliding against Automobile Friction Materials. and their Wear[7]. Reginald Bashforth, G. (1973) The Manufacture of Iron and Steel [8]. 3. EXPERIMENTATION 3.1. Materials used 1. Aluminum 2. Fly ash powder 3. Granular blast furnace slag editor@iaeme.com

3 Comparative Studies on Mechanical Characteristics of Granulated Blast Furnace Slag and Fly Ash Reinforced Aluminium Composites Figure 1 Aluminum Rods Figure 2 Fly Ash Figure 3 Granulated blast furnace slag 3.2. Apparatus required 1. Electric Furnace 2. Die i.e. permanent mould cavity 3. Graphite crucible for melting the material 4. Stirrer 3.3. Method applied Stir casting: It is an economical process for the fabrication of aluminum matrix composites. There are many parameters in this process, which affect the final microstructure and mechanical properties of the composites Experimental Procedure Aluminium rods 1800 grams, 200 grams of fly ash powder, 200 grams of granulated blast furnace slag are weighted on electronic weighing machine. Then ingots of aluminium are cut into smaller pieces. Now aluminum pieces are put in furnace and heated up to 700 C. The graphite crucible is preheated on furnace and after pre heating of the crucible aluminum was melted inside the crucible, after the aluminum has reached to molten state the preheated fly ash and blast furnace slag particulates were introduced individually to make the fly ash and blast furnace slag reinforced composites respectively. As the casting is chosen to be stir casting method, the entire liquid inside the crucible was thoroughly stirred with graphite stirrer manually. This molten liquid is prolong heated up to 20 minutes for its morphological transformation. Then the molten metal was poured into permanent mould cavity i.e. a die with dimensions 130x20 millimeter cross-sectional area. The casting is allowed for air cooling editor@iaeme.com

4 J. Manoj Kumar and N. Gopikrishna Figure 4 Melting of Aluminium Figure 5 Pouring of molten Al-fly ash and Al-GBF into the mould Figure 6 Casted Al-fly ash and Al-GBF 3.5. Tests carried out Hardness Test Fig. Hardness test results on Brinell scale Sl.no Material Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Average Hardness (BHN) 1. Al-fly ash Al-GBF Al Impact Test (Charpy Test) Material Al-fly ash Al-GBF Location of the sample Longitudinal direction Longitudinal direction Impact 1 (Joules) Impact 2 (Joules) Impact 3 (Joules) Average (Joules) editor@iaeme.com

5 Comparative Studies on Mechanical Characteristics of Granulated Blast Furnace Slag and Fly Ash Reinforced Aluminium Composites 3.6. Compression test Test has been conducted till failure point thus ultimate load of 104 KN against the failure for Al-GBF was found to be more when compared with Al-FLY ASH, with a load of 89 KN and AL-2024, with a load of 75 KN. Upon conduction of compression test load versus displacement graphs have been resulted such graphs have been depicted here below. Figure 7 Test report of compression test of Al-Fly ash Figure 8 Test report of compression test of Al-GBF Figure 9 Test report of compression test of Al Microstructures of the samples The Micro-structures of the samples gives us an idea of how the different phases of the composite material are distributed. It also gives us the information of the composition of elements in the samples. Figure 10 Micro-structure of Al-fly ash Figure 11 Micro-structure of Al editor@iaeme.com

6 J. Manoj Kumar and N. Gopikrishna Figure 12 Micro-structure of Al-GBF 3.8. Micro Test Micro tests have been carried out under the magnification of 10X for sample Al-GBF such structures have been achieved and presented here below Micro Test structure of Al-GBF Grain size according to ASTM E112 the number is 6.5 has been resulted Micro Test structure of Al-fly ash Grain size according to ASTM E112 the number is 5.5 has been resulted

7 Comparative Studies on Mechanical Characteristics of Granulated Blast Furnace Slag and Fly Ash Reinforced Aluminium Composites Micro Test structure of Al-2024 Grain size according to ASTM E112 the number is 5 has been resulted 4. RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION According to various tests conducted on the composites namely impact test, hardness and microstructures, the following results are obtained upon which conclusions are drawn Hardness As the hardness value varies from one place to another place in material because of various factors such as composition difference, type of cooling etc. The average hardness of Al-fly ash has been obtained as for HBW and for Al-GBF has been obtained for HBW Hardness obtained from the prepared Al-fly ash is approximately greater than Al-GBF Impact Strength The impact strength of Al-fly ash is 58 Joules and that of Al-GBF is 54 Joules It is observed that the impact strength of Al-fly ash is nearly greater than Al-GBF Compression and Microstructure Compressive properties of the synthesized alloy and composites can be understood by studying the load-displacement curves. The load requirement increased with increase in displacement for both the alloy and composites. The composites show higher loads than the unreinforced alloy; and this increase in compression strength is more for presence of fly ash than GBF slag in the alloy matrix, the same is confirming from the true stress and true strain results. This indicates that the reinforcement addition leads to improvement in the strength of the composites. The lower strength values for GBF slag reinforced composite can be attributed with the soft nature of GBF slag particles compared to fly ash, same was confirmed by the hardness of both the composites. The strength of the metal matrix composites (MMC) is expected to increase by addition of solid ceramic particles due to the strengthening effects occurred in particulate reinforced composites. These effects include the transfer of stress from the matrix to the particulate, the interaction between individual dislocations and particulates, grain size strengthening mechanism due to a reduction in composite matrix grain size, and generation of a high dislocation density in the matrix of the composite as a result of the difference in thermal expansion between the metal matrix and particulates editor@iaeme.com

8 J. Manoj Kumar and N. Gopikrishna Al-fly ash (ALFA) and Al-GBF slag composites were produced by stir casting route successfully. There was a uniform distribution of reinforcement particles in the matrix phase and also existing a good bonding between matrix and reinforcements. The hardness of the composites increased whereas the density of the composites decreased with presence of reinforcement than the base alloy. Higher hardness values were reported for Al-fly ash composite than Al-GBF slag composite. Enhanced mechanical properties were observed for both the composites than alloy under compression. 5. CONCLUSIONS The main objective of the research work is to cast and test the Aluminum-Fly ash & Aluminium-Granular Blast Furnace Slag composite materials for various properties. There are various theoretical and experimental methods to find the solutions of such Problems but limited to certain shapes and loading conditions. The impact strength, hardness is found experimentally on impact testing machine, hardness testing machine respectively. REFERENCES [1] Rohatgi, P.K. (2001) Cast Metal Matrix Composites Past, Present and Future. In: Invited Silver Anniversary Lecture by American Foundry Society, AFS Transactions, 633. [2] D. Srikanth Rao and N. Gopikrishna evaluated the strain energy release rate of epoxy glass fibre laminate (Mode - I)- International education & Research Journal - Jan, ISSN No: Vol : 3 Issue : 1 pp [3] Rohatgi, P.K., Gupta, N. and Daoud, A. (2008) Synthesis and Processing of Cast Metal Matrix Composites and Their Applications. ASM Handbook. Casting: Vol. 15. ASM International, [4] N. Gopikrishna and D. Srikanth Rao Evaluation of Mode-I Fracture Toughness of Epoxy- Glass Fiber Composite Laminate. - International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology ISSN No: Vol : 6 Issue : 1 Pp , Jan, 2017 [5] Weiss, D. (1996) Using Metal Matrix Composite Castings. Processing, Properties and Applications of Cast Metal Matrix Composites, Cincinnati, 289. [6] Rohatgi, P.K., Guo, R.Q., Huang, P. and Ray, S. (1997) Friction and Abrasion Resistance of Cast Aluminum Alloy-Fly Ash Composites. Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A, 28, [7] Reginald Bashforth, G. (1973) The Manufacture of Iron and Steel, Vol. 1. B.I. Publications, New Delhi, [8] Natarajan, N., Vijayarangan, S. and Rajendran, I. (2006) Wear Behaviour of A356/25SiCp Aluminium Matrix Composites Sliding against Automobile Friction Materials. Wear, 261, [9] Sathyabalan P, Kumar R S and Balasubramanian S, Prediction of Tensile Strength and Elongation in Hybrid Aluminium Composite Using Ann, International Journal of Civil Engineering and Technology, 8(9), 2017, pp [10] V V K Lakshmi, Prof. K. Venkat Subbaiah, Dr. Sarojini J and Dr. Shabana. Study of Mechanical Properties and Wear behaviour of Sugarcane Ash Reinforced Aluminium Composite. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology, 8(6), 2017, pp editor@iaeme.com