Mechanical Properties Enhancement of A356 Alloy Hybrid Composite by FSP and SP Route

Pure aluminium alloy (AA) components are not extending their cyclic life due to soft nature of the surfaces for most of the automotive structural parts, exposed to various loading and stress exposed areas through various surface property enhancement techniques. Among all the technique friction stir processing (FSP) followed by shot peening (SP) technique is the most viable and cost-effective process for enhancement of component performance and SP removing residual stresses on the samples thereby improving surface strength. The main objective of the proposed work was cast A356 alloy reinforced with nano form of 6wt% silicon carbide (SiC) harder particles and 3wt% self-lubricant graphene (Gr) was used to fabricated a surface nano hybrid composite through FSP technique. SP route was performed on the FSP-ed samples with optimal parametric conditions for obtaining improved mechanical performances. The response revealed that FSP-ed surface nano hybrid composites with SP route holds higher mechanical performance than non-SP sample and also compare with unreinforced stir zone sample. A higher hardness of 86VHN is obtained for reinforced and post processed stir zone samples which is almost 26.5% more than the casted samples and tensile strength of 289 MPa, which is nearly 17% greater than the casted specimens with enhanced ductility and increased compression strength of 634MPa being 10% greater than the cast samples. Finally, it was concluded and recommended that surface composites processing via FSP coupled with SP prolongs the automotive component life.