Experimental investigation and characterization of copper composite reinforced with tungsten carbide and silicon carbide particulate

Abstract

Copper based composites play a key role in the development of industrial robotics, aerospace, automobile, and power sector for making components like welding, electrical sliding contacts, gears, bearings, bushes, brakes, and clutches, etc. Even though promising reinforcements are available for composites, always researchers search for a new combination of matrix and reinforcement for tailored properties and cost-effectiveness. The present study focuses on the analysis of the tribological and machining studies of copper matrix alloy reinforced with 10 % SiC and 0, 2.5, 5, 7,5, and 10 wt.% WC composite. The composite is fabricated through the powder metallurgy process. From this method, the WC/SiC particulate strengthened copper composites were developed by compacting and formerly by traditional sintering. Mechanical actions, which include hardness, density, tensile strength, porosity, yield strength are studied. The occurrence of the uniform particle size distribution of a reinforcing phase is verified by an electron microscope (SEM) analysis. The experimental result evinces that the maximal hardness value 86.08 HV is attained with the combination of 80% Cu-10% WC-10%SiC. This results in: (i) availability of hard WC reinforcement (ii) high-constraints to the local matrix deformation amid indentation and (iii) less porosity with the elevating WC content. The wear properties of the P/M Cu-x%WC-10%SiC MMC are improved significantly by integrating the WC particulates which leads to the decrease in wear rate up to 10% WC in the copper matrix. With the inclusion of WC, the rate of wear improves due to an unbonding of WC particles from its MMC, thereby leading to an increase in the rate of wear. The results indicate that the composite with increased wt.% of WC particles exhibit good wear resistance behavior. Aside from this characterization approach, machinability studies on Cu-WC-SiC for disparate proportions are done by Wire Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM). WEDM operation is executed by varying the machining p