Experimental study on the effect of sintering cycle and reinforcement of 1% niobium carbide (NbC) in aluminium metal matrix composite (Al-MMC)

Abstract In Today’s production scenario, Aluminium Metal Matrix Composites (AMMC) play a key role in Automotive and aircraft sectors for their improved mechanical properties. In the current situation, a great deal of work has been done on Aluminium (Al) base material, which is reinforced with various carbides such as Silicon Carbide, Tungsten Carbide and Boron Carbide in different proportions through powder metallurgy route for numerous applications. In spite of this, no work has been done on the combination of pure Aluminium (Al) and Niobium carbide (NbC) in powder metallurgy route through different sintering cycles. The main objective of the present work was to study and compare the physical and mechanical properties of the processed specimen through two different sintering cycles and to compare the results obtained. In this experimental study, 1% NbC powder was mixed with pure Al powder in the High Energy Planetary Ball Mill (HEPBM) and processed through the sintering cycles namely Conventional Sintering and Chu’s Two-Step Sintering process (TSS-C) followed by compaction. Four samples were obtained, such as two pure Al and two Al-1% NbC. In addition, studies have been conducted to examine density and micro-hardness. Finally, the results show that the mechanical properties of the TSS-C specimen with the addition of 1% NbC have a higher density and micro-hardness than the rest of the samples.