LiteratureSurveyReportNano-DispersionStrengtheningof.docVIP

Literature Survey Report: Nano-Dispersion Strengthening of Aluminum Student: Luke Fischer Email: Luke. Fischer@colorado.edu Advisors: Professor Rishi Raj, Dr. Atanu Saha 1 Background and Motivation for Nano-Dispersion Particulate Strengthened Metal Matrix Composites Ceramic particulate Metal Matrix Composites (MMCs) offer significant performance advantages over pure metals and metallic alloys. The desirable properties of these materials give them many potential applications in area’s such as in the automotive, aerospace and sporting goods industries. MMCs can be classified into one of three broad categories, namely particle reinforced MMCs, short fiber reinforced MMCs and continuous fiber reinforced MMCs. The cost of manufacture of reinforcing fibers and the processing costs of fiber reinforced MMCs are relatively high, making them uneconomical for the majority of applications. Particulate reinforced MMCs have been found to be more economical in the many applications. Particulate MMCs can involve particle’s ranging in size from around 10nm up to 500μm or larger. Composites with a fine, uniform dispersion of particles in the range of 10nm -1μm are referred to as “nano-dispersion”, “nano-scale dispersion” or “nano-metric dispersion” strengthened composites. Much research has been conducted on particulate reinforced MMCs, however the majority of this work has focused on micro-metric particle dispersions which are easier to achieve than nano-metric particle dispersions, but less effective in strengthening. It is important to remember that this project is concerned with nano-metric dispersions; however the production and use of micro-metric dispersion strengthened aluminum alloys can contribute significantly to the understanding of the factors involved in the production and use of particulate MMCs in general. For many years particulate MMCs have been heralded as an area for great expansion; for example Aerospace America published an article entitled “Particulates