Understanding the unlubricated friction and wear behavior of Fe-aluminide reinforced Al-based in-situ metal–matrix composite

In the last few decades, metal–matrix composites (MMC), because of their better specific modulus and strength, are considered as candidate materials for several important engineering applications such as automobile parts, etc. In the application of moving engineering components, the tribological properties (friction and wear) are recognized as the major factors in determining their performance. The present work investigates the fretting wear behavior of newly developed Al based in-situ metal–matrix composite reinforced with Fe-aluminide particles. The phase composition and in-situ reinforcement content are varied by varying the hot pressing temperature and volume percent of precursor powders (nanosized Fe2O3). The wear experiments were performed in the gross slip fretting regime to understand their tribological properties against bearing steel in the ambient conditions of temperature (22–25 °C) and humidity (50–55%RH). Based on the obtained results, the optimum microstructure and processing conditions to achieve superior friction and wear resistance are identified. An important outcome of the present research is that a lower COF of ∼0.25 is achieved with the composites having 20 vol.% reinforcement. The mechanisms of material removal from the fretted interface are also discussed.