Microstructural Analysis and Mechanical Properties of Direct Recycling Aluminium Chips AA6061/Al Powder Fabricated by Uniaxial Cold Compaction Technique

Aluminium alloy AA6061 recycling benefits to the current and future generations by conserving energy and other natural resources. Thus with the current approach of processing technique by cold compaction technique solid state recycling made it possible for fabrication of direct recycling chips. In this research, AA6061 chips and powder were fabricated to form a sample by using uniaxial cold compaction at 9 tons for 20 minutes and sintering process at temperature of 552 °C. The microstructural behaviour of the recycled AA6061/Al powder samples were distributed non-homogeneously and randomly between the chips and powder region. The density of sample full chips and full powder shows the closest value to theoretical at 2.47 g/cm3 and 2.43 g/cm3 respectively. The hardness and compression strength examined shows the same reaction with the increasing amount of Al powder content. The full Al chips showed the highest hardness at 65.6 Hv and gradually decreased with increasing Al powder. Whereas, the maximum compression strength was at fully chip content at 307.7 MPa. The compression strength decreases with increasing amount of Al powder content due to the weak bonding between the particles.