Experimental Study on the Fabrication of Fiber Reinforced Aluminium by Squeeze Casting

Abstract

Squeeze casting increases the productivity of the fabrication of composite materials, whereas the theoretically expected strength is not easily attainable by it due to many factors. The present investigation has been carried out systematically to find the optimum conditions for squeeze casting applied to fabrication of SiC fiber reinforced aluminium. From the experiment, it is found that the selected conditions satisfy the requirements, i.e., soundness and high strength. The results obtained are summarized as follows : l) Squeeze pressure must exceed 500 kg/cm2 to produce composites free from cavities. 2) Infiltration speed does not affect the microstructures and tensile strength. 3) There exists a suitable temperature range to fabricate reliably sound composite materials with a given volume fraction of fiber. The range can be presented by considering a parameter depending on both temperatures of fiber and molten aluminium immediately before infiltration.