Chapter 12 Laser Cutting of the TiN +Al2O3 Reinforced Aluminium Matrix Composites Through Semisolid Sintering Sonia Ezeddini, D. Katundi, Emin Bayraktar, and I. Miskioglu Abstract Laser cutting is commonly used for manufacturing of strong composites as an advance machining process. It is suitable for geometrically complex profile cutting in the metals used in manufacturing engineering. In the present work, laser cutting process of aluminium matrix composites obtained from scrap chips reinforced with hard ceramics (TiN + Al2O3) were carried out. They are being widely used in the aerospace and automobile industries such as aircraft structure, internal combustion engines, plain bearings, wheels, pistons, brake rotors for high speed trains, etc. In fact, TiN does not react with aluminium. It keeps its thermal stability up to 3000 C and chemically inert to most of the common acids. It is industrially important due to its high hardness, good electrical and optical properties, etc. TiN is presently being used in cutting tools, solar-control films and other micro-electronic applications. For this reason, it was interesting to develop a new composite from scrap aluminium chips reinforced with TiN +Al2O3 ceramic powders and to examine its tailored beahviour of these composites. The thermal effects of laser cutting and effects of main operating parameters such as laser power, and cutting speed on the cutting edge and on the cutting surface were examined. The evolution of the microhardness underneath the cutting surface due to laser power is also examined. The composite used in this study was produced through combined method of powder metallurgical (P/M) and thixoforming (Semi solid). Microstructure of cutting edge and cutting surfaces are investigated in detail by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Cutting surfaces have been analyzed with 3D optical surface roughness-meter (3D–SurfaScan). Roughness evaluations were taken as optimization criteria as a function of the cutting surface and cutting parameters (power, speed, gas pressure etc.) that have been carried out by Taguchi method. A simple and useful tool was proposed for using in real manufacturing environment. Keywords Recycled composite • Laser cutting • Taguchi method • SEM, Tailored behaviour 12.1 Introduction Composite materials are very suitable for their tailored properties that are accomplished by combining two or more materials to obtain the crucial scale of properties. The most characteristic feature of composites is that, while the individual constituents retain their properties, they synergize to give properties which may not be found in any one of them alone [1–6]. Recently, extensive research study has been carried out, and it was shown that there is tremendous promise of ceramic reinforced metal-matrix composites (MMCs) [6–9]. Various processing techniques have been developed to engineering composites for various fields of applications [4, 5, 11] such as aerospace, defense, automobile, and sports sectors. In MMCs, the addition of a small amount of second-phase materials with high shear strength imparts unique properties to the base materials [4–7]. Metal matrix composites (MMCs) have been developed to respond the demand for lighter materials with high specific strength, stiffness and wear resistance [1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 11]. Aluminium is preferred as matrix material in MMCs because of its low density, and manufacturing facilities. It means that high performance indices due to their light weight, high strength-to-weight ratio, ease in melting and casting, and good engineering properties [3]. However, particulate reinforced aluminium matrix composites (AMCs) are much more attractive MMC materials due to their strength, ductility and toughness as well as their ability to be processed by S. Ezeddini (*) • D. Katundi • E. Bayraktar (*) Supmeca/Paris, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, St-Ouen, France e-mail: bayraktar@supmeca.fr I. Miskioglu (*) Michigan Technological University, ME-EM Department, Houghton, MI, USA e-mail: imiski@mtu.edu #Springer International Publishing AG 2018 P.R. Thakre et al. (eds.), Mechanics of Composite and Multi-functional Materials, Volume 6, Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63408-1_12 115
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