Investigation of the effect of aging variables on the impact behaviour of Al 6061 alloy and its composites

In this paper, an attempt has been made to find out the effect of aging variables on the Impact behaviour of Aluminium 6061 alloy and Silicon Carbide particulate reinforced Aluminum 6061 Metal Matrix Composites. The Taguchi´s Design of Experiment technique was used to identify the heat treatment conditions for optimizing the properties of the selected materials. The composite material of was prepared by using stir casting method. Homogenization annealing was performed on the as-cast materials to obtain uniform grain size before carrying out the required heat treatment. The experimentation was planned on the basis of Taguchi´s orthogonal array. Fractional factorial experimentation was performed using three levels for the parameters volume percentage of reinforcement and the three heat treatment variables namely, solutionizing time, aging temperature and aging time. The results indicated that the predicted values using developed mathematical model for Impact strength properties were in close agreement with experimental results. All the parameters and the interaction of the parameters had significant contribution to the impact strength of the materials. The volume fraction of reinforcing particles was found to be most significant in affecting the impact strength of the materials followed by the aging temperature.