effect of slow cooling in reducing pore size in a sintered powder metallurgical 6061aluminium alloy缓慢冷却的影响在减少孔隙大小在6061年烧结粉末冶金铝合金.pdfVIP

Materials Sciences and Application, 2011, 2, 870-877 doi:10.4236/msa.2011.27117 Published Online July 2011 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/msa) Effect of Slow Cooling in Reducing Pore Size in a Sintered Powder Metallurgical 6061 Aluminium Alloy 1* 2 3 S. Solay Anand , B. Mohan , T. R. Parthasarathy 1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Adhiparasakthi Engineering College, Melmaruvathur, Tamil Nadu, India; 2Department of Production Technology, MIT Campus, Anna University, Chennai, India; 3Metallurgist, MetMech Engineers, Chennai, India. Email: ssrajsolayanand@yahoo.in, mohan@, metmech2005@yahoo.co.in Received December 15th, 2010; revised January 24th, 2011; accepted May 25th, 2011. ABSTRACT The usage of powder metallurgy aluminium compacts in lieu of ferrous components in automotives helps to lower vehi- cle weight. The major drawback in the commercially available press sintered aluminium alloy is porosity which is mainly dependent on the powder metallurgical process parameters such as compaction pressure, sintering temperature and cooling rate after sintering. In this paper the effect of particle size and furnace controlled cooling after sintering on porosity level and micro hardness of an elemental 6061 aluminium alloy has been investigated. Aluminium particle sizes of 20 µm and 150 µm were used. The elemental 6061 aluminium alloy powders are warm compacted at 175 MPa. After sintering for about one hour at 600 ˚C, the aluminium compacts were furnace cooled at the rate of 1˚C/min to dif- ferent temperatures of 500 ˚C, 400 ˚C, 300 ˚C and 200 ˚C. When the cooling temperature after sintering inside the furnace is effected at various temperatures from 600 ˚C to 200 ˚C, for a precipitate hardened aluminium compacts with alumin- ium particle size of 20 µm, the porosity level reduced by 26% and that for