Robert Johnson Materials Science Laboratory Report #1 Consideration of Aluminum for an Aircraft Engine Design Introduction I have been

hired by Thomas Enterprises tasked with determining if aluminum 6061 will suffice for use in an experimental jet engine. In order to make this decision, I will need to decide if the hardness and tensile strength are sufficient, if the cost of the aluminum alloy is significantly less than the cost of zirconia, if the thermal properties are appropriate, and if the fracture mode is the same in the aluminum alloy as it is in the ceramic. My lab partner and I (Austin Kleinmeyer) conducted this experiment on March 14, 2013. The experiment was performed in the Seamans Center located in Iowa City, Iowa. Background In the field of engineering, hardness and tensile strength are both very important properties. Hardness is defined as the measure of a materials resistance to deformation by surface indentation or by abrasion (873). Tensile strength is defined as the maximum engineering stress, in tension, that may be sustained without fracture (879). Hardness is often a very useful property because from it, the engineer can determine how well a certain material will hold up under certain conditions which could cause deformation to a given material. Tensile strength is also often a very useful property, since it tells the engineer how much tensile strength a certain property can withstand without fracturing. Hardness and tensile strength are related by the fact that hardness measures the materials ability to resist deformation, and tensile strength measures the materials ability to withstand stress without fracture. The two properties are

proportional to each other. If you increase one, the other also increases. If hardness and tensile strength are not taken into heavy consideration, the material chosen may fail and result in a catastrophe. There are different scales that hardness can be measured in. Several of the different hardness scales are: Knoop, Brinell, Rockwell, and Mohs. There are multiple scales because some scales are more suited towards different types of materials. For example, the Knoop scale is used for brittle materials such as ceramics, while the Brinell scale is generally used on materials that have a high quality surface finish. The scales have evolved through the years, and the most commonly used scale today is the Rockwell scale, due to its simplistic nature of testing. Because of the fact that harness is not a well-defined property, a method of conversion between scales has not yet been obtained. However, through experimentation, it has been found that hardness conversion data is dependent on the material being tested. This has allowed engineers to create conversion tables specific to certain types of materials. As of now, this is the method used to make comparisons between the different hardness scales. Often times it is desirable to change materials physical properties. One method of doing this is to heat treat the material. Heat treatment, also known as annealing, refers to the process of heating a material that has already been cold worked. When this is done, the material returns to its pre cold-worked condition, meaning that the metal becomes softer and weaker, yet more ductile (280). The reason that heat treatment physically changes the materials properties is because, at elevated temperatures, some of the stored internal strain energy is relieved by virtue of dislocation motion, which is the result of atomic diffusion. Essentially, at elevated temperatures, atomic diffusion (mass transport by atomic motion) happens more readily, which increases dislocation motion, therefore altering the materials physical properties (279).

The relative cost of the two materials (Aluminum alloy 6061 and Zirconia) is shown below in Table 1.1. The relative cost represents the per-unit-mass cost of a material divided by the average per unit mass cost of a common engineering matieral A36 plain carbon steel. The reason why it is advantageous to compare the costs of these two materials using relative cost is because while the prices of specific materials will most likely change over time, the ratio of the costs between two materials will only vary a small amount.

Table 1.1: Relative Cost between alloy 6061 and zirconia Material Aluminum Alloy 6061 Zirconia Relative Cost 5.7 97.1

Two more important properties of materials in engineering design are the modulus of elasticity and the yield strength. The modulus of elasticity is the ratio of stress to strain when deformation is totally elastic. It is also a measure of the stiffness of a material (875). Yield strength is the stress required to produce a very slight yet specified amount of plastic strain. A strain offset of 0.002 is often used (881). The modulus of elasticity is important because it can tell the engineer how much a certain material may stretch under a particular loading, a key piece of information when designing a product. The yield strength is important because once a loading on a material surpasses the materials yield strength, a permanent deformation will occur. Engineers must design the product to have a high enough yield strength in order to avoid this deformation.

One important piece of information that can be obtained from tensile testing is the percent elongation. The percent elongation is defined as how much a material elongates after loading in percent. Equation 1.1 shows the formula for percent elongation. Equation 1.1: Percent Elongation

The important information that this equation provides is the percent that the material elongates under a specified loading. This is useful because when designing a product there may be restrictions as to how much it can elongate. By calculating the percent elongation first, the engineer can avoid potential failures down the road. In engineering design, it is important to know the different modes of fracture. A mode of fracture represents the different surface characteristics of a given material (WEBSITE). The four different modes of fracture are as follows: Dimple fracture, transgranular cleavage, fatigue failiure, and decohesive rupture. A dimple fracture usually occurs when there is only one load applied to the material. Transgranular cleavage occurs at well-defined planes in the crystal which are shown in body centered cubic and hexagonal close packed (WEBSITE). Fatigue failure can be broken down into two types, high cycle and low cycle. Decohesive rupture occurs along weak material surfaces. The designated alloy to be tested is aluminum 6061. The specifications for this alloy can be found below in Table 1.2.

Experimental Methods In order to determine if Aluminum alloy 6061 is a viable material for the jet engine, an experiment was performed. The experiment was performed by four engineering students. The experiment consisted of _ steps, listed below: 1. Obtain test samples of aluminum 6061. 2. Perform hardness testing. 3. Perform tensile testing. 4. Perform calculations. In step number 1, we obtained the test samples of aluminum 6061. The hardness test samples were one inch by one inch. The tensile test samples were bolts that were constructed using a lathe.