Experimental Investigations of Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Aluminium Alloy Using Vibration Mold

Abstract

Al-Si based alloys are the most important nonferrous alloys. These alloys were enormously used in various sectors like marine, aerospace and automobile industries because of their excellent mechanical properties such as corrosion resistance, low density, and low coefficient of thermal expansion, excellent wear and good strength. These are used in areas that requires a combination of light weight and high wear resistance like engine blocks without cylinder liners, pistons etc. But all these performances of these alloys depends on the grain refinement particularly dendrite arm spacing, primary and secondary eutectic silicon particles. In this work, the results of the frequency of the vibration attached to the casting mold during solidification on the casting of microstructure of Al-18wt% Si were investigated. This involved application of vibration table which produces different ranges of frequencies of vibration with small amplitude. Therefore, the mechanical vibration is produced using vibration table and samples are casted at different frequencies and one sample was casted using traditional method using sand casting. Microscopic examination of the casted specimens with and without vibration were investigated and strength properties with and without vibration were investigated. The relation between the frequency and mechanical properties were found analytically by using linear regression analysis. Therefore, the experimental results showed improvement in mechanical properties with vibration when compared to without vibration, with vibration. Microstructure of the cast also improved when compare with, without vibration of the cast specimen.