Experimental study of the effect of wear parameters on the wear behavior of A356 alloy/cow horn particulate composites

Experimental study of the effect of wear parameters on the wear behaviour of A356 alloy reinforced with cow horn particles (CHp) produced by spark plasma sintering was investigated. Experiments were conducted based on the plan of experiments generated through Taguchi's (L9) technique. Tribometer was used for the wear test and Scanning electron microscope was used to analyse the worn scar of the samples. The results shows that, A356 alloy reinforced with CHp exhibited better dry sliding wear resistance than the unreinforced alloy. Wear rate decreased as the amount of CHp reinforcement increased in the matrix. It was found that, the optimum level of the factors with minimized the wear loss were obtained at: wt%CHp (20%), applied load (10 N), sliding velocity (3  m/s) and sliding distance (2000m). It can be seen that the wear track of the sample are (D = 0.81 andL = 42.85 μm) and (D = 0.54 and L = 27.03 μm) for A356alloy and composites at optimum condition respectively. The results showed that the addition of cow horn particles as reinforcing materials in A356 alloy composites increased the wear resistance of the composites greatly.