This paper described some mechanical properties of aluminum alloy using agro-waste materials such as sawdust, groundnut shell, and eggshell. The sand-casting method was adopted to produce the alloy with 5, 15, 25, and 35% wt. additives. The microstructure of the various samples produced after quenched in water, palm oil, and engine oil was examined while hardness properties were determined. The result obtained shows that hardness values increased with an increase in the addition of sand mold Agro-waste ashes. Samples cast with eggshell ash additive and quenched in water coolant had the highest hardness value of 82.4 at 25% wt. additive when compared with sawdust ash and groundnut shell ash additives. sand-casting enhances the hardness of the specimens and thus, can be used in many engineering applications such as engine blocks and wheels in automotive parts and aerospace components.

Development of low cost metal alloys reinforced with waste materials such as agro-waste and industrial waste has been one of the major innovations in the area of material engineering. This aimed at producing engineering materials with improved properties without additional cost of techniques such as annealing and normalising. In this study, aluminium scraps from automobile parts (secondary aluminium) were used as principal material and reinforced with locally available inexpensive cow horn particulate (ago-wastes) of 3, 6, 9 and 12% by weight to produce an aluminium based composite. Hardness and impact strength of the aluminium alloy reinforced cow horn particulate (CHp) were studied. The results showed that the produced composite exhibits superior hardness value compared to the alloy metal. The hardness increases from 87.7 BHN to 101.4 BHN, 132.4 BHN, 134.4 BHN and 143 BHN with addition of 3%, 6%, 9% and 12%, weight of CHp into the aluminium alloy matrix, respectively. However, the composite displayed lower impact strength than the aluminium alloy and the strength reduces as the weight percentage of CHp in the composite increases. Addition of 3%, 6%, 9% and 12%, weight of CHp into the aluminium alloy reduced the impact value from 49.4