Investigations on Tribological Behaviour of Titanium Dioxide Particles Filled Al-0.6Fe-0.5Si Alloy Composite using TOPSIS Approach

Aluminium metal matrix composites (AMMCs) playing a prominent part in the aerospace and automotive sectors owing to their superior mechanical and tribological properties. Hence, the aim of this work is to investigate the effect of titanium dioxide (10 wt.% TiO2) particles addition on hardness and tribological behaviour of Al-0.6Fe-0.5Si alloy (AA8011) composite manufactured by stir casting method. The surface morphology of developed composite clearly shows the inclusion of TiO2 particles evenly distributed within the matrix alloy. Hardness of the composite was measured using Vickers micro hardness tester and the maximum hardness was obtained at 95.6 Hv. A pin-on-disc tribometer was used to carried the wear test under dry sliding conditions. The influence of wear control parameters such as applied load (L), sliding speed (S) and sliding distance (D) were taken as the input parameters and the output responses considered as the specific wear rate (SWR) and co-efficient of friction (COF). The experimental results were analyzed using Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Preferred Solution (TOPSIS). Based on the TOPSIS approach, the less SWR and COF achieved at the optimal parametric combination were found to be L = 30 N, S = 1 m/s and D = 2000 m. ANOVA results revealed that applied load (76.01%) has the primary significant factor on SWR and COF, followed by sliding speed (20.71%) and sliding distance (3.12%) respectively. Worn surface morphology was studied using SEM image of confirmation experiment specimen to understand the wear mechanism.