Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142

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Journal of Alloys and Compounds

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jalcom

Inuence of pores on workability of porous Al/SiC composites fabricated

through powder metallurgy + mechanical alloying
A. Hassani , E. Bagherpour, F. Qods
Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Semnan University, Semnan 35131-19111, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the present work, the compressive formability of porous Al/SiC composites fabricated through
Received 26 November 2013 mechanical alloying (MA) is investigated. Aluminum matrix composites consisting of pure Al reinforced
Received in revised form 21 December 2013 with different amounts of 5, 10, 20 wt.% SiC with mean particle size of 16 lm and other composites con-
Accepted 23 December 2013
taining 10 wt.% SiC with particle sizes of 12, 16 lm were produced by a powder metallurgy route. The
Available online 3 January 2014
effect of milling time on microstructure and mechanical properties of the composites was studied. The
phased compression tests coupled with density measurement and continuous compression of the sam-
Keywords:
ples were indicative of increases in strength and decreases in ductility of the composites with increasing
Aluminum matrix composite
Powder metallurgy
milling time, increasing amount of reinforcement particles and decreasing their size. Instantaneous den-
Mechanical alloying sity coefcient and instantaneous work hardening exponent of the samples, during deformation stages,
Upsetting show decreasing trends when density increased. It was also revealed that instantaneous work hardening
Workability exponent increase with increasing milling time, increasing weight percentage of the reinforcement and
decreasing its particle size. The samples having higher initial densities, containing lower amounts of lar-
ger SiC particles show better workability.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction strength, modulus, wear resistance and fatigue resistance [6,7].

Metal matrix composites have been developed for high-perfor-
mance applications because of their attractive physical and
mechanical properties [1]. Particulate metal matrix composites
(PMMCs) are widely used due to the lower cost-effectiveness of
the products and inherent isotropic properties. The properties of
PMMCs make them ideal candidates to replace steel and iron in
the automotive and aerospace industries [2]. Aluminum matrix
composites (AMCs) are interesting in automotive, aerospace and
transport industries owing to their light weight, high elastic mod-
ulus, improved strength and good wear resistance. Also, they intro-
duce suitable tribiological behavior for producing automotive parts
[3]. AMCs are known to be hard materials which exhibit a low
capability of being shaped and formed through the conventional
techniques. Nevertheless, many promising attempts have been
made to produce Al composites with a great potential of superplas-
tic forming and high strength [4].
AMCs with ceramic particles are relatively easy to process and,
in comparison with ber-reinforced composites, are nearly isotro-
pic [5]. During last decade aluminum metal matrix composites
reinforced with SiC particles are widely used in aerospace, military
and civil manufacturing industries, etc. as a result of their high
Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +98 231 335 4119.
E-mail addresses: ahasani@semnan.ac.ir, irsangestan@yahoo.com (A. Hassani).
AlSiC composites hold the greatest promise for future growth as
a result of their tailored properties, good forming characteristics,
low cost-effectiveness and high volume production methods [8].
The ultimate fabrication procedures of MMCs are proved to be
powder metallurgy (P/M) routes including blending, compacting,
sintering, and plastic deformation. Blending is one of the crucial
processes in PM where the metallic powder particles are mixed
with reinforcement particulates [9]. Powder forging begins with
custom-blended metal powders being fed into a die, then being
compacted into a green shape, which is then ejected from the
die. This compact, called a preform, is different from the shape
of the nal part will acquire after being forged. Again the green
compact is sintered (solid-state diffused) at a temperature below
the melting point of the base metal in a controlled atmosphere fur-
nace, creating metallurgical bonds between the powder particles
and imparting mechanical strength to the preform. Therefore,
powder forging involves the fabrication of a preform by the con-
ventional press and sinter technique, followed by the forging of
the preform to its nal shape with substantial densication [10].
Powder forging is particularly attractive because of the cost- and
material-saving advantages compared to the conventional casting
and forging through better dimension and weight control [11].
The compressive deformation behavior of the MMCs produced
by P/M has been widely studied. Narayanasamy et al. [1214] have
performed signicant research work on workability behavior of

0925-8388/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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 A. Hassani et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142 133

AlSiC composites during cold upsetting. In their investigations, 2 Rrh  R2 rz 2rh

they focused on the effects of particle size and percentage addition
m 2
2 Rrz  R2 rz 2rh
of second phase powder material, SiC, on workability studies.
Workability refers to the relative ease with which a material can where m is Poissons ratio, R is relative density, and rz and rh are ax-
be shaped through plastic deformation [15]. Raj et al. [16] have ial and hoop stress components respectively. From Eq. (2), the hoop
studied the effect of sintering temperature and time intervals on stress component can be determined by:
workability behavior of AlSiC powder metallurgy composites dur- !
2a R2
ing cold upsetting. Zhao et al. [17] have worked on the microstruc- rh rz 3
tural changes in powder particles and the inuence of mechanical 2  R2 2R2 a
alloying (MA) processing on the distribution of SiCp reinforcement
The hydrostatic stress is given by:
and their corresponding properties. Min et al. [6] have studied the
effect of volume fraction of SiC particles on mechanical properties rz rr rh
rm 4
of the composites by both model simulation and experiment. Lu 3
et al. [9] investigated the structural changes of mechanically al- In the case of axisymmetric triaxial stress condition, the hoop
loyed Al based MMC and the inuence of the MA process on the and the radial stresses are equal (rr = rh). Therefore, Eq. (4) can
mechanical and thermo-mechanical properties of an SiCp rein- be rewritten as follow:
forced composite. However, literature dealing with the effect of
rz 2rh
mechanical alloying on workability of AlSiC porous composite un- rm 5
der triaxial stress state condition is limited. 3
In the present investigation the effect of mechanical alloying As discussed in [14,19] the effective stress (reff) can be deter-
parameters on the workability of the porous AlSiC composite mined from the following expression:
material under triaxial stress state condition and its work harden- " #0:5
ing effects during upsetting at room temperature were evaluated. r2z 2r2h  R2 r2h 2rz rh
reff 6
The relationships between the various stress ratios namely rh/reff 2R2  1
and rz/rm, and the relative density and its effect on the particle
size were also investigated. As an outgrowth of experimental evidence of the importance of
the hydrostatic component of stress state on fracture, Vujovic and
Shabaik [20] proposed a parameter called a formability stress in-
2. Workability of powder metallurgy composites during cold dex b as follow:
upsetting  
3rm
b 7
Metalworking processes involve plastic deformation that re- reff
sults in the change of both the cross-sectional area of the work
This index determines the fracture limit as explained in Ref.
piece and of its overall shape. Different metal working processes
[20].
produce different stress states during deformation. Bulk metal-
working processes produce a state of stress that is generally triax-
2.2. Instantaneous strain-hardening exponent and instantaneous
ial with the major stress components being compressive. When
density coefcient
one of the stress components becomes tensile at some points in
the deformation region, fracture is the limiting factor for these
During upsetting, the axial true strain (ez) is expressed as:
processes.  
The plastic deformation of powder preform material is similar h0
ez ln 8
to that of conventional materials, but is complicated by the effect hf
of a substantial volume fraction of voids in the material. In addition
where h0 and hf are initial and nal heights of perform.
to volume change, yielding of porous metals is also not completely
As explained by Narayansamy and Pandey [13], the hoop strain
insensitive to the hydrostatic stress imposed. During the upsetting
(eh) can be determined as:
of metal powder preforms the mode of deformation is quite differ- !
ent from that of wrought materials and is function of the both den- 2D2b D2c
eh ln 9
sity and the hydrostatic stress [10]. The mathematical expressions 3D20
used for the determination of various upsetting parameters of
upsetting of powder preform material are discussed in this section. where D0 is the initial diameter, Db is the bulged diameter and Dc is
the average contact diameter. By considering the top and bottom
contact diameters as D1 and D2 respectively, the average contact
2.1. Formability stress index
diameter (Dc) can be calculated by following expression:
Kuhn and Downey [18] determined the basic deformation and D1 D2
Dc 10
fracture behavior of sintered powder materials through the use 2
of the simple compression test, establishing that densication
In the case of triaxial stress state condition, the radial strain is
can be enhanced and fracture can be delayed by increasing the
equal to hoop strain, so, the effective strain is given by Narayanas-
compressive level of stress on the material. The plastic Poissons
amy et al. [14] as below:
ratio (t) was obtained for sintered powder compacts in homoge-
( h ! )0:5
neous compression for both hot- and cold-working for ferrous 2 i ez 2eh 2
and non-ferrous powders found to be given by: eeff ez  eh 2 eh  ez 2 1  R2 
32 R 3
m 0:5q2 1 11
where q is the density of perform. For theoretical computations, it is often necessary to represent
According to Narayanasamy et al. [12] the state of stress in a tri- an experimentally determined stressstrain curve by an empirical
axial stress condition is given as follows: equation of suitable form (constitutive relationships). When the
134 A. Hassani et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142

Table 1 where K is strength coefcient and n is a strain-hardening exponent

Starting powder characteristics. usually lying between zero and 0.5. Effective stress and strain can
d10 (lm) d50 (lm) d90 (lm) be calculated by Eq. (6) and Eq. (11) respectively. For compressive
SiC12 lm 5.5 0.2 12 0.5 20 0.2
materials (i.e. metal powder preforms) the strength coefcient re-
SiC16 lm 7.5 0.3 16 0.5 38 0.5 lates to relative density by the following expression:
Al65 lm 20 0.5 65 0.6 75 1
K K 1 RA 13
where A is the density coefcient.
Table 2 Assuming that the consecutive compressive loads were speci-
Composites preparation conditions. ed as 1, 2, 3, . . ., (m  1), m, it was proved elsewhere [14] that
Material Size of Milling SiC Relative Average Average pore the instantaneous strain-hardening exponent(ni) can be obtained
number SiC time percentage density size of size of sintered as:
powders (h) (wt.%) (%) powder preform (lm)
(lm) (lm) lnrm =rm1
ni 14
1 12 4 10 90 0.1 44.7 1 7.01 0.1 lnem =em1
2 12 8 10 90 0.1 35.5 1 6.34 0.1
Also, the instantaneous density coefcient can be calculated by:
3 12 12 10 90 0.1 31.7 0.9 5.82 0.1
4 16 12 5 90 0.1 48.3 1 8.4 0.1 lnrm =rm1
5 16 12 10 90 0.1 36.2 1 6.04 0.1 Ai 15
6 16 12 20 90 0.1 16.8 0.5 5.8 0.1 lnRm =Rm1

3. Experimental procedure
cold deformation is sufciently large for the elastic strain to be ne-
glected, it is frequently convenient to employ the Ludwik power To fabricate the composites, various nominal portions of 5 wt%,
law [21]: 10 wt% and 20 wt% of the SiC powders having the particle sizes of
12 and 16 lm, were added to the atomized Al powders of 65 lm
reff K eneff 12
(Table 1). Those mixtures were ball-milled for 4, 8, and 12 h in a

Fig. 1. SEM images of (a) as-received Al powder, (b) 12 lm SiC powder, (c) 16 lm SiC powder and the Al10%SiC12 lm powder mechanically alloyed for (d) 4 h and (e) 8 h
(lamellar structure of one of powder particles is shown in higher magnication) and (f) 12 h.
 A. Hassani et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142
Fig. 2. SEM images of (a) Al5%SiC16 lm, (b) Al10%SiC16 lm and (c) Al20%SiC16 lm, after 12 h of milling time (the right column is same as the left but in higher
magnication).
planetary ball mill at speed of 270 rpm using chromium steel balls
of 10 mm diameter. The ball-to powder mass ratio was 12:1 zinc
stearate (2 wt%) was used as the process control agent (PCA) to
prevent excessive cold welding of powder particles. Mechanical
alloying conducted under argon atmosphere for a variety of milling
times (4, 8, 12 h). The mixed powders were die-pressed at room
temperature under a pressure of 315325 MPa in a 15 mm diame-
ter cylindrical steel die to produce the compacts with densities of
0.87, 0.9 and 0.95. The specimens which consisted of eight pre-
forms of the composites with different initial conditions (Table 2)
were then compressed using Dartec compression testing machine
at a constant cross-head velocity of 0.1 mm/s. After degassing the
specimens at 200 C for 15 min, they were sintered for 1 h in an
electrical furnace protected by Ar atmosphere with a heating rate
of 10 C/min to a temperature of 500 C.
Phase analysis of milled powder at different stages of milling
was conducted by X-ray diffraction using a Philips X-ray
135
diffractometer equipped with a graphite monochromator using
Cu Ka operated at 40 kV and 30 mA. The XRD patterns were re-
corded in the range of 080 for 2h by the step size of 0.02 /s. After
background subtraction, all the proles are t with Lorentzian
function [22] by Fityk software and full-width at half maximum
(FWHM) for all peaks was measured. The results were analyzed
using WilliamsonHall [23] to calculate the crystallite size of the
samples.
For compression tests, cylindrical specimens with 14.9 mm
diameter and 8.4 mm length were used. Compression tests were
carried out at room temperature using an Instron machine operat-
ing at a constant strain rate of 0.1 mm/s. To reduce the friction,
samples were wrapped with Teon tape. The test was carried out
until the rst surface cracks was seen.
Cold upset test were conducted at room temperature in a com-
puter controlled Dartec compression testing machine at a constant
cross-head speed of 0.1 mm/s. In general, each preform was sub-
136 A. Hassani et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142
jected to compressive incremental loading in steps of 3 kN until
ne cracks appeared on its free surface. After each interval of load-
ing dimensional changes in the specimen such as height after
deformation (hf), top contact diameter (D1), bottom contact diam-
eter (D2), bulged diameter (Db) and density of the preform (q) were
measured. The density of forged preforms was determined using
the Archimedes principle. The above measurements were made be-
fore and after deformation. The instantaneous density coefcient
(Ai), instantaneous strain-hardening exponent (ni) and formability
stress index (b) under triaxial stress state condition was measured
according to relations which have been discussed in Section 2
using owcharts describes in Narayanasamy et al. [14].
Density measurements of the forged samples were carried out,
using the Archimedes method using pure water according to the
standard ASTM B 328-96 [24]. Also porosity in term of percentage
calculated by:
qc  q
Porosity%  100
qc
where qc is theoretical density of composite and q is the calculated
density of samples.
Microstructural characteristics of the consuming powders, the
milled composite powders and sintered preforms were investi-
gated by scanning electron microscope (SEM, Philips XL30, Nether-
lands). An automatic image analyzer system is used to calculate
the average grain size of particles using SEM images.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Microstructural studies
Fig. 1 shows SEM micrographs of the as-received Al and SiCp
and the evolution of morphologies of milled powders by increasing
the time of mechanical alloying. It can be seen that Al particles ex-
hibit an irregular shape (Fig. 1a). Fig. 1(b and c) show that SiC par-
ticles have irregular shape with sharp angles. After 4 h of milling Al
particles which are the more ductile component get attened to
Fig. 3. SEM images of sintered composites which is mechanically alloyed for 12 h; (a) Al10%SiC12 lm and (b) Al10%SiC16 lm. Some porosities are indicated by the
arrows.
platelet or pancake shapes as it is shown in Fig. 1d. It can be seen
that the initial irregular shape of the powder has changed to ake
like after mechanical alloying, and the small irregular particles
have attened and attached to the large particle (Fig. 1d). Fig. 1e
shows after 8 h of milling a composite lamellar structure is formed
by cold welding of the attened particles; so, it seems that the cold
welding is the dominant mechanism during milling before 8 h of
process due to the ductility of aluminum powders. Strain harden-
ing of powder particles by increasing the MA time results in brittle-
ness of particles cause the fragmentation; thus more equiaxed and
ner particles is seen in powders after 12 h of milling (Fig. 1f).
Fig. 2 shows the SEM images of composite powders reinforced
by 16 lm SiC particles milled for 12 h with various amount of rein-
forcements (SiC particles). Results show that increase in percent-
age of SiC, will cause to reduction of the size of composite
powder. The reason can be referred to this point that with increas-
ing SiC particles, as the harder part, severe deformation will be
happened in softer part (Al particles). As a result, the crystalline de-
fects such as dislocations are generated. Hence the dislocations
density is increased and hardening of particles is accelerated. Frac-
ture of harder particles leads to reduce the size of particles.
Results in Table 2 show that with increasing amount of SiC rein-
forcement, the amount of porosity in sintered performs was ob-
served to be reduced. Also, Compare materials number 3 and 5 in
Table 2, it is clear that at the same milling time and percentage
of reinforcement, decrease in the particle size of SiC particles had
signicant effect on reducing the porosity due to a higher rate of
load transfer. In the composites with higher amount of reinforce-
ments or lo with arrows in SEM images of Fig. 3, show some of
these porosities in the sintered samples. By decrease the particle
size from 16 to 12 lm, the extent of porosity was reduced by about
3.7%. In the composites with higher amount of reinforcements or
lower particle size of them, the total matrixreinforcement inter-
faces is longer. Therefore the paths for diffusion, as one of the
mechanisms of pore elimination during sintering, are much more
in these composites. As a result the elimination of pores is acceler-
ated. On the other hand at the same amount of reinforcements, the
 A. Hassani et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142 137

number of SiC particles in the composites contains smaller SiC par-

ticles is much more than those contains bigger one; so the number
of pores in the latter is lesser. Consequently, the smaller particle
size of reinforcement leads in a large number of smaller pores after
sintering. Despite the difference in pore size, the same relative den-
sity for the samples in Table 2 can be justied by the above fact.
Also Fig. 3 shows that a good distribution of SiC particles in the ma-
trix is achieved after the sintering process.
Fig. 4 illustrates the XRD patterns for three different of Al
10%SiC16 lm composite powder, the sintered specimen of Al
10%SiC16 lm and the sintered perform of Al20%SiC. Compare
Fig. 4(a) and (b) it is clear that after sintering one of Al peaks is
eliminated while the intensity of the other is increased. Also, the
peaks of non-sintered powders is more broaden. It means that as
a result of high temperature of sintering process the crystallite size
in sintered samples is bigger. Fig. 4(b) and (c) indicate that by
increasing the amount of SiC, the intensity of SiC peaks is in-
creased. In addition, peaks are more broaden in samples contains
20% SiC. It means that more SiC particles results in ner crystallite
size which is conrm the data in Table 2 which is explained previ-
ously. Using XRD patterns and WilliamsonHall method The aver-
age crystallite size of Al10%SiC(16 lm) composite before and after
sintering calculated as 106.7 nm and 126.9 nm respectively. It is
clear that by sintering the average crystallite size increases due
to high temperature of sintering process. Also, the average crystal-
lite size for sintered Al20%SiC is calculated as 87.2 nm. It is shown
that by increasing the amount of SiC particles, severe deformation
occurs in powder particles and such deformation causes produc-
tion of many crystal defects such as dislocations. The existence of
dislocations leads to increasing the energy of the system; to reduce
the energy, dislocations form sub-grains.

4.2. Workability studies

4.2.1. Effect of milling time

Fig. 5 shows the true stresstrue axial strain curves obtained in
different milling times for Al10%SiC-12 lm. It can be seen that by
increasing the milling time the strength is increased while the
strain to fracture is almost remain the same. The sample milled
for 12 h possesses the highest strength which can be attributed
to grain renement resulted from longer severe plastic deforma-
tion of the material through ball milling [25]. The lower crystallite
size (section 4-1) obtained after 12 h of milling makes more obsta-
cles on dislocations slide due to its higher dislocations density.
Fig. 4. XRD patterns for (a) Al10%SiC16 lm grain size, (b) Al10%SiC16 lm
Axial, hoop, effective and mean stress vs. axial stress for Al
sintered sample and (c) Al20%SiC16 lm sintered sample. Some porosities are
10%SiC12 lm mechanically alloyed for various milling times ob- indicated by the arrows.
tained from cold upset test are shown in Fig. 6. In all cases, with
increasing the strain, the axial stress, peripheral (hoop) stresse,
the effective stress and the hydrostatic stress increased. As shown
in Fig. 6 by increasing the milling time the strain to fracture is re-
duced. Extracting date from Fig. 6 and used the equations in Sec-
tion 2, the instantaneous density coefcient (Ai) can be calculated
from Eq. (15). Fig. 7 shows the variation of Ai with relative density
for axial and triaxial state of stress at different milling times. As
seen, behaviors of the samples are nearly similar in each stress
states. It can be seen that for all the range of relative density the
instantaneous density coefcient (Ai) is larger for the samples with
higher time of milling. In the denser sample which contains fewer
pores, relative density has less inuence on its strength. In the
sample milled in a longer time, inuence of instantaneous density
on the material behavior is more obvious, because its compressibil-
ity is lower and as seen, the range of change in relative density is
shorter. For the samples with 4 and 8 h of milling time the instan-
taneous density coefcient (Ai) is decreases with increase in rela-
tive density (R). For the composite milled for 12 h, Ai is decreased Fig. 5. True stressstrain curves of Al10%SiC12 lm composite at different milling
till the relative density of about 92.5% and after that increased times.
138 A. Hassani et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142

Fig. 6. Axial, hoop, effective and mean stress vs. axial stress for Al10%SiC12 lm mechanically alloyed for (a) 4 h, (b) 8 h and (c) 12 h.

Fig. 7. Variation of instantaneous density coefcient (Ai) with relative density for samples milled in different times at (a) axial stress state and (b) triaxial stress state.

slightly. This is caused by the fact that the pores no more enhance
the capacity of deformation of the material, but they lower the
strength by acting as crack initiation sites. The rate of decrease in
instantaneous density coefcient (Ai) with respect to relative den-
sity (R) is higher for 12 h milled sample compared to others be-
cause of geometric hardening in 12 h milled composite.
Using Eq. (14) instantaneous strain-hardening exponent (ni) is
calculated for Al10%SiC12 lm at different milling times. The
variations between the instantaneous strain-hardening index va-
lue (ni) and the relative density (R) for these composites is shown
in Fig. 8. For all milling times the exponent have the descending
trend by increasing the relative density. Also, the increase in mill-
ing time leads to achieve higher instantaneous strain-hardening
exponent. In porous materials, geometrical work hardening is
added to the conventional work hardening resulting in a higher
work hardening compared with non-porous materials [26]. By
increasing the milling time, domination of geometrical work hard-
ening, compared to the work hardening resulted from dislocation
mechanisms, causes the work hardening exponent to be higher
and its fall with relative density increase to be steeper. As seen
 A. Hassani et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142 139

Fig. 8. Variation of instantaneous strain-hardening exponent (ni) with relative density for samples milled in different times at (a) axial stress state and (b) triaxial stress state.

Fig. 10. True stressstrain curves of composites reinforced with different amount of
16 lm SiC and milled for 12 h.

Fig. 9. Variation of formability stress index (b) with relative density for samples
milled in different times.
in the gure, the nal value of n for a sample milled for 12 h is
more than that for the other samples, because here the closure of
pores occurs late, and even geometrical work hardening occurs at
nal stages of deformation. In the other samples, faster elimination
of pores leads to a nearly ineffective geometrical work hardening,
and to domination of conventional work hardening, which results
in lowering n value and expansion of its change range (the lower
decline rate).
Formability stress index (b) is calculated by Eq. (7) to determine
the fracture limit as discussed in Section 2.1. Fig. 9 shows the var-
iation of this index with relative density for Al10%SiC12 lm at
different milling times. Increase in formability stress parameter,
b, with increasing relative density during the process is evident.
Higher strengthening of the material due to closure of pores, which
leads to a higher density, is the cause of this change [10]. The less
the time of milling, the higher is the strain to failure.
4.2.2. Effect of the amount of SiC particles
True stresstrue axial strain curves of composites reinforced
with different amount of 16 lm SiC particles and milled for 12 h
are shown in Fig. 10. By increasing the amount of SiC particles
the strength is increased while the strain to fracture is decreased.
SiC particles as the harder part in the composites can prevent the
dislocations glide. The lower ductility of the composites contain
more SiC particles may come from the fact that large volume frac-
140 A. Hassani et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142

Fig. 11. Axial, hoop, effective and mean stress vs. axial stress for (a) Al5%SiC16 lm, (b) Al10%SiC.16 lm and (c) Al20%SiC16 lm.

Fig. 12. Variation of instantaneous density coefcient (Ai) with relative density for different amount of SiC particles at (a) axial stress state and (b) triaxial stress state.

tions usually lead to a non-homogenous distribution and clustering
of the particles, degrading the mechanical properties of the com-
posite [27,28].
Data extract from upset tests of composites contain different
volume fraction of SiC is shown in Fig. 11. By increasing the
amount of SiC, strain to fracture is reduced and the strength is in-
creased. Using results in Fig. 11 in equations in Section 2, the work-
ability parameters including instantaneous density coefcient (Ai),
instantaneous strain-hardening exponent (ni) and Formability
stress index (b) are calculated.
 A. Hassani et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142 141

Fig. 13. Variation of instantaneous strain-hardening exponent (ni) with relative density for different amount of SiC particles at (a) axial stress state and (b) triaxial stress state.

It is shown in Fig. 12 that with decreasing the amount of SiC

particles, variation of instantaneous density coefcient of the com-
posites contains 10% and 20% of SiC with relative density almost
have the same trend. They have descending trend at low relative
densities. Approximately, between 91% and 92% of relative density,
instantaneous density coefcient did not changed with increasing
relative density. At higher relative densities, variation of Ai is
ascending. For composite contain 5% SiC, Ai is decreased with
increasing relative density. In this composite although it was grain
rened, but due to low amount of the reinforcement, dislocations
movement here occurs more easily than in the composites with
higher amount of SiC particles. Since initial density of Al20%SiC
composite at the beginning of deformation was a few lower than
that of the others, a sudden fall occurs in Ai from its higher values,
but afterwards, in a certain relative density, higher percentage of
SiC prevents the strength to decrease more.
Fig. 13 shows the variation of instantaneous strain-hardening Fig. 14. Variation of formability stress index (b) with relative density for compos-
ites contains different amount of SiC.
exponent (ni) with relative density for different amount of SiC.
For all the composites at low relative densities the instantaneous
strain-hardening exponent is reduced by increasing the relative due to incompatibility between hard particles and soft matrix,
density. The slope of reduction for the composite contain 20% SiC causes a drop in workability of the material containing higher
is higher than others. At higher relative densities ni is increased amount of reinforcement particles. The inuence of reinforcement
for Al20%SiC composite while is still decreased for others. The rate particle size on strength and workability of the composites was
of decreasing in ni for Al10%SiC composites is much faster. also investigated. Generally, ner reinforcement particles cause
It is seen in Fig. 14 that with increasing the amount of SiC par- an increase in strength and a decrease in ductility and formability
ticles, formability stress parameter (b) decreases. Flow localization, of the composite, but in compressive loading, the composites rein-
142 A. Hassani et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 591 (2014) 132142
forced by smaller particles show increases in both strength and
ductility compared to the ones reinforced by coarse particles. In
the composites with coarse reinforcement particles, small thermal
residual stresses occur in the areas of incompatibility between ma-
trix and coarse reinforcements, thus strengthening caused by in-
creases in dislocations density does not occur. Therefore, with
increasing the size of reinforcement particles, yield strength and
module of elasticity decrease [29]. On the other hand, cracking of
reinforcement particles during manufacturing processes, decreases
ductility and fracture toughness; coarse particles are much more
prone to crack even at lower pressures [2931].
5. Conclusions
1 With increasing the milling time, the powders morphologies
were initially as the stuck aluminum akes containing SiC
particles, and gradually, with fragmenting these akes the
powders morphology turned to a more equiaxed one. With
increasing the amount and size of the reinforcement parti-
cles, cold welding and fracture mechanisms were active fas-
ter and a homogeneous structure was attained in a shorter
interval.
2 The stressstrain curves obtained from the phased and con-
tinuous compression tests indicate an increase in strength
and a decrease in ductility of the specimens with increasing
milling time, the amount and size of the reinforcement and
initial density of the porous sample.
3 The relative density coefcient, Ai, in the phased compres-
sion tests showed a decreasing trend with increasing strain
due to a decrease in volume fraction of pores for all samples.
For the composites with higher volume fraction of reinforce-
ment, Ai was lower but for the composites reinforced with
ner particles Ai was higher. The preforms having higher ini-
tial relative density had a higher Ai.
4 The strain-hardening exponent, ni, for different porous com-
posites decreased, from high initial values, with increasing
deformation and occurrence of geometric work-hardening
due to further closure of pores. The samples with higher val-
ues and also ner SiC particles possessed a lower strain
hardening exponent which was caused by strain hardening
due to increasing dislocations.
5 Variation of formability stress parameter, b, in different sam-
ples was incremental with becoming them more condensed
during the tests.
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