The influence of HPT on microstructure and wear resistance of Al-7wt%Si-2wt%Fe Alloy

Abstract

An aluminum silicon-based alloy (Al-7wt%Si-2wt%Fe) was subjected to severe plastic deformation by the high-pressure torsion (HPT) method. This HPT processing was conducted at room temperature up to five revolutions under a pressure of 6.0 GPa and rotation speed of 1.0 rpm. Observations of microstructure evolution, especially intermetallic phases, was carried out by an optical microscope (OM) and a scanning electron microscope (SEM). It was found that the ironintermetallic particles decreased in size with numbers of turns. This is due to the large strain introduced during HPT processing which produced a degree of fragmentation of intermetallic phases which increased with the imposed strain. In addition, wear behaviors of the as-cast and samples deformed by HPT were also investigated using micro-tribometer UMT-2 (CETR Co., USA) following the ASTM G99-05 (2010) standard. The friction coefficient and wear volume loss were measured to evaluate the effect of imposed strain during HPT processing on wear resistance. It was found that the values of the average friction coefficient were slightly lower in deformed samples and the wear volume loss decreased with increasing numbers of turns.