Sliding wear behaviour of alumina/nickel nanocomposites processed by a conventional sintering route

The wear resistance of Al2O3/2.5 vol.% Ni nanocomposites sintered by a conventional route was studied under ball-on-disk dry sliding conditions and compared with the same nanocomposites but consolidated by spark plasma sintering, together with alumina obtained by the same technique and by hot pressing. The results showed an improvement of about 0.5, 1 and 2 orders of magnitude, respectively. Thus, alumina/Ni nanocomposites processed by conventional route can compete, in cost and wear performance, with nanomaterials obtained by more sophisticated techniques.