COMPARATIVE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES STUDIES ON HEAT & UNHEAT TREATED AL7075 ALLOY HYBRID COMPOSITES

In the present work, Al7075 based hybrid composites was developed using stir casting technique. Al7075 hybrid composites with different weight percentage of Mica, Graphite and E-glass fiber were developed to study the effect of these reinforcements on microstructure and mechanical properties, E-Glass fiber is kept constant at 0, 2, 4%, Mica is varied from 1-3% in steps of 1 and Graphite varied from 1-5% in steps of 2. It can be seen that the three peaks corresponding to Al were seen at 38º, 46º and 65º 2θ angles and small peaks related to all the three reinforcement mica, graphite and E-glass fiber were observed in the XRD pattern. Grain size analysis was examined using Clemex Image-Analyzer software, it was observed that decrease in grain size of Al7075 matrix was found to decrease with the increase in reinforcements, Hardness was found to increase with increase in reinforcement content whether it could E-glass fiber from 0% - 4% or mica from 1% - 3% or graphite content from 1% - 5%. Ultimate tensile strength increased with the increase in reinforcement content both before and after heat treatment.