The Use of Spark Plasma Sintering to Fabricate a Two-phase Material from Blended Aluminium Alloy Scrap and Gas Atomized Powder

Recently innovative solid state / 'meltless' recycling techniques have been developed and proposed for the consolidation of aluminium alloy scrap, aiming both at energy and material savings by eliminating the melting step. In this context, a powder metallurgy route is examined as a solid state recycling technique for the fabrication of a two-phase material via Spark Plasma Sintering. By mixing aluminium atomized powder and machining chips of the same alloy, a two-phase material was produced, where the powder phase acts as a binder/matrix for the Al scrap. Hardness, density, compression testing along with microstructural and computed tomography analysis of the densified Al 6061 alloy are presented.