Analysis of Tribological Performance of Cu Hybrid Composites Reinforced with Graphite and TiC Using Factorial Techniques

Abstract

In this study, a copper hybrid metal matrix composite reinforced with graphite (5, 10, and 15 vol%) and TiC (5, 10, and 15 vol%) was processed by a powder metallurgy route. Optical micrographs confirm the uniform distribution of reinforcements in the copper matrix. The hardness of the composites decreased with the addition of graphite. However, the addition of TiC into the copper matrix increased the hardness of the composites due to its high hardness. The influence of graphite percentages, load, sliding speed, and sliding distance on the wear of the as-sintered hybrid composites was studied based on the design of experiments. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to study the effect of the parameters on the wear weight loss of the hybrid composites. The weight loss due to wear of the hybrid composites decreases from 0.1345 to 0.0830 g as the volume percentage of graphite increases from 5 to 15%. Results indicated that the normal load has greater static influence of 43.85%, sliding distance has an influence of 29.84%, percentage of graphite has an influence of 15.17%, and sliding speed has an influence of 1.83% on the weight loss of copper hybrid composites due to sliding wear. The worn-out surfaces were analyzed using electron microscopy, which reveals that the addition of both hard ceramic reinforcement TiC and soft solid lubricant graphite significantly improves the tribological performance of the copper composites.