Fatigue and Fracture Behavior of Al6061-B4C Aluminium Matrix Composites

In the present day engineering design and development activities many Scientists, Researchers and Engineers are striving hard to develop new and better engineering materials, which accomplishes high strength, low weight and energy efficient materials since the problems of environment and energy are major threshold areas. The development of new materials is growing day by day to replace the conventional materials in aerospace, marine engineering, automobile engineering industries etc., Hence, composite materials are found to be an alternative. A variety of metals and their alloys such as Aluminum, Magnesium and Titanium are comprehensively used as matrix materials. Among these Aluminium alloys have been used extensively, because of their excellent strength, low density, corrosion resistance and toughness. Similarly, many researchers have attempted to develop aluminum based metal matrix composites using different reinforcements such as SiC, Al2O3, B4C, TiC, TiO2, B4C etc., are added to the matrix to get required MMC’s. Among these reinforcements, B4C emerged as an exceptional reinforcement due to its high strength to density ratio, possesses high hardness and avoid the formation of interfacial reaction products with aluminum. Hence, in this paper attempts are made to fabricate Al 6061-3, 6, 9 and 12 wt.% B4C metal matrix composites by stir casting process to study fatigue life and fracture toughness as per ASTM standards. It is evident that fatigue strength and fracture toughness of the composites were enhanced with the addition of the wt.% of the reinforcement.