Impact of boron nitride and silicon carbide on tribological properties of Al-3Gr-based hybrid composites

In today's industry, hybrid composites based on Al-3Gr play an important role in many applications. However, improving the tribological properties and material performance is important for the widespread use of such newly developed materials in the industry. For this purpose, novel hybrid composites were produced by keeping the graphite weight (3 wt.%) in the Al main matrix and adding silicon carbide (1.5–3-6 wt.%) and boron nitride (1.5–3-6 wt.%) at different rates as reinforcement materials. Microstructural and tribological performances of hybrid composites produced by powder metallurgy method using vacuum sintering (hot pressing) were investigated. Experimental results showed that the hardness value of the matrix increased with the addition of reinforcement and that the SiC (S-2) reinforced sample had more stiffness than the BN (S-3) reinforced sample. In addition, hybrid reinforced composites were shown to have higher hardness values than single reinforced composites. The highest hardness value was recorded as 75.59 HB in sample S-6. In the wear analysis determined the lowest wear loss as 1.34 × 10−3 cm3 under 1N load in sample S-6. As the applied load increases from 1 to 5 N, it was determined that the volume loss increases approximately two times, and the friction coefficient decreases about ten times. The lowest coefficient of friction was found to be 0.6746 in sample S-5. It was determined that the temperature increased 20% as the applied load increased from 1 to 5 N.