A comprehensive review on material selection, processing, characterization and applications of aluminium metal matrix composites

Aluminium alloy based metal matrix composites have found increased applications in space, automobile, aircraft structures because of simplicity of operation and reasonably good mechanical properties. But the main drawbacks in aluminium matrix metal matrix composites (AMMCs) are distribution of particles, wettability and chemical reaction between reinforcement and matrix. These factors have considerable influence on mechanical, tribological and corrosion properties of the developed metal matrix composites. Therefore it is necessary to overcome these drawbacks by optimizing the process parameters to produce AMMCs tailored to an application. This review focuses on to the issues related to the processing of MMCs, selection of both matrix and reinforcement, techniques available for the characterization of AMMCs. With the available literature an attempt is made to provide the guidelines for researcher about present scenario of AMMCs fabrication, properties and applications.