A STUDY OF WEAR AND HARDNESS PROPERTIES OF ALUMINUM MATRIX BAGASSE REINFORCED COMPOSITE

Abstract

Hardness and wear properties of aluminium bagasse reinforced composite were studied. The composite was produced using stir casting route, the design of the experiment was carried out using the Taguchi method. Four processing parameters at four levels each were considered. The parameters are the weight of bagasse, melting temperature, stirring speed and stirring time. The aluminium 2024 alloy was the metal matrix formulated from the constituent elements and sugar cane bagasse ash was the reinforcement. L16 orthogonal array was selected for the study to obtain the optimal process parameters from the four-level chosen. Signal to noise ratio and ANOVA were used for the analysis of test data. The result so obtained shows that the weight of bagasse is the most influential and contributed majorly followed by the melting temperature for the wear rate and hardness properties. It was found that the optimum was at level 4, 3, 3, and 4 for the weight of bagasse, melting temperature, stirring speed and stirring time respectively for hardness property, but for the wear rate levels 1,4,2, and 3 are respectively the optimal level parameters.