The Effect of Heat Treatment on the Composite Properties Based on Aluminum and Reinforcement Alumina and Silicon Carbide Prepared By Powder Metallurgy Technique

Abstract

Adoption of powder metallurgy technique used aluminum as the metal matrix with 99.7% purity and ≥03μm particle size reinforced with alumina (Al2O3) 99.7% purity with 53 μm in size and Silicon Carbide (SiC) 99.7% purity with ≥95μm in size to prepare the (Al - 10wt% Al2O3– 20wt%SiC) composite, these composites were cold pressed through uniaxial pressing at different pressure of (500,600,700,800,900)MPa and sintered at 550oC for one hour. The composite products were treated thermally using both rapid isothermal heating and traditional heating at temperature 400oC for 15min and then cooled in steady air. The research aims to study the effect of pressing pressure, heat treatments on the properties of the samples since it was found that the physical properties (density, porosity and thermal conductivity) increases with increasing pressing pressure and increase significantly after heat treatment (rapid isothermal heating and traditional heating) was accompanied by an increase in the mechanical properties (hardness, compressive strength ).