Carbonization Temperature and Its Effect on the Mechanical Properties, Wear and Corrosion Resistance of Aluminum Reinforced with Eggshell

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of the carbonization temperature on the mechanical properties, density, wear and corrosion resistance of AA 6063 reinforced with eggshells was investigated. The selected fabrication route for this investigation was stir casting while the weight fraction of the eggshells was kept constant at 5 wt.%. The carbonization temperature was varied at 900, 1000, 1100, and 1200 °C. The microstructure revealed that the eggshells were fairly uniformly dispersed on the individual grains and along the grain boundaries of the base metal. It was also shown that the presence of agglomeration increased with increasing carbonization temperature. The densities of the eggshell-reinforced AMCs were lower than that of the base metal. The analysis of the microhardness showed an improvement of 40.79, 22.93, 25.70, and 29.43% for the 900, 1000, 1100, and 1200 °C carbonized eggshell samples, respectively. The compressive strength studies showed that the addition of carbonized eggshells improved the compressive strength of the composites compared to the base metal. The tribology studies showed that the wear resistance improved for the 900 and 1200 °C samples, while the electrochemical studies revealed that the corrosion resistance improved for the 900 and 1000 °C samples only.