The Effect of Mg and Mn Addition on Hardness, Tensile and Wear Properties of LM6 Aluminum Alloy

Aluminum and its alloys have become inevitable in the modern world. Today, aluminum has become the most preferred material by the engineers due to its peculiar properties such as light, strong, resilient, ductile at low temperature, high-strength to weight ratio and corrosion resistance. Aluminum has approximately 1/3rd of the weight of iron, copper, brass or steel. Aluminum alloys are widely used in modern aircraft industries and in various other transportation industries because of its improved properties. Among all series of Al alloys, aluminum-silicon alloy is widely used in the automotive industry because of its good castability, low cost and superior mechanical properties. In this study, the aluminum LM6 is alloyed with magnesium and manganese in three aspects i.e. LM6 aluminum alloy is added with 5 wt% magnesium as first specimen, LM6 aluminum alloy with 5 wt% manganese as second and LM6 aluminum alloy with both manganese (5 wt%) and magnesium (5 wt%) as third specimen was synthesized by stir casting method. The effect of Mg and Mn reinforcement with LM6 aluminum alloy on its hardness, tensile properties and wear loss were investigated.