0% found this document useful (0 votes)
61 views8 pages

Microstructural Analysis

Research paper

Uploaded by

Azrin Rahman
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
0% found this document useful (0 votes)
61 views8 pages

Microstructural Analysis

Research paper

Uploaded by

Azrin Rahman
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 8

Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

ScienceDirect
Procedia Engineering 184 (2017) 687 – 694

Advances in Material & Processing Technologies Conference

Microstructural Analysis and Mechanical Properties of Direct


Recycling Aluminium Chips AA6061/Al Powder Fabricated by
Uniaxial Cold Compaction Technique
Muhammad Irfan Ab Kadira, Mohammad Sukri Mustapaa,*, Noradila Abdul Latifa,
Ahmed Sahib Mahdia
a
Stuctural Integrity and Monitoring Research Group, Department of Mechanics, Faculty of Machanical and Manufacturing Engineering,
Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, 86400 Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia.

Abstract

Aluminium alloy AA6061 recycling benefits to the current and future generations by conserving energy and other natural
resources. Thus with the current approach of processing technique by cold compaction technique solid state recycling made it
possible for fabrication of direct recycling chips. In this research, AA6061 chips and powder were fabricated to form a sample by
using uniaxial cold compaction at 9 tons for 20 minutes and sintering process at temperature of 552°C. The microstructural
behaviour of the recycled AA6061/Al powder samples were distributed non-homogeneously and randomly between the chips and
powder region. The density of sample full chips and full powder shows the closest value to theoretical at 2.47 g/cm3 and 2.43
g/cm3 respectively. The hardness and compression strength examined shows the same reaction with the increasing amount of Al
powder content. The full Al chips showed the highest hardness at 65.6 Hv and gradually decreased with increasing Al powder.
Whereas, the maximum compression strength was at fully chip content at 307.7 MPa. The compression strength decreases with
increasing amount of Al powder content due to the weak bonding between the particles.
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
©Peer-review
2017 Published by Elsevier
under Ltd. This
responsibility of isthe
anorganizing
open accesscommittee
article underofthe
theCC BY-NC-ND
Advances license & Processing Technologies
in Material
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Conference.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the Urban Transitions Conference

Keywords: Recycled aluminium chips; AA6061; powder metallurgy; cold compaction; microstructures; hardness; and compression strength

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +6-07-453-3030.


E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-7058 © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the Urban Transitions Conference
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2017.04.141
688 Muhammad Irfan Ab Kadir et al. / Procedia Engineering 184 (2017) 687 – 694

1. Introduction

Aluminium production has been widely used for many application thus recycling of aluminium leads to a huge
number of economic and environmental benefits. In comparison with other materials, aluminium production has one
of the largest energy differences between primary and secondary production at 186 MJ/kg and 10–20 MJ/kg
respectively [1]. From this reason numerous manufacturers have now focuses of expanding the usage of secondary
materials [2]. Aluminium chips produced by machining are the most standout amongst all sorts of scrap to reuse by
remelting, as the oxidation of the material is heightened because of the high surface to volume proportion of the
chips [3]. A direct conversion of aluminium alloy machining chips into a new product is an alternative approach to
overcome the issue of material loss during remelting of aluminium chips and to further develop the energy balance
of the aluminium production [4-6].
Chips from aluminium and its alloy are particularly derived from machining operation are commonly
characterized by its spiral and elongated shape, thus, making them unfit to recycle through conventional methods. In
making them into a more specific size and shape chips, many kinds of milling processes will be involved to obtain a
smaller and regular shape particles of the recycled aluminium. This process will cause more time consumption and
cost. Therefore, plenty of studies were made to avoid the hassles of conventional recycling process by directly
conversion method through pressing [7-10].
Numbers of studies have reported that the solid state recycling of aluminium alloys have been positively carried
out using powder metallurgy method. Schikorra et al. [11] studied the recycling of AA6060, AA6082 and AA7075
aluminium chips and their mixtures by cutting, compaction and hot extrusion into a rectangular bar shape.
Meanwhile, a new approach was used by Fogagnolo et al. in which the aluminium chips is directly cold or hot
pressed and then hot extruded [8]. AA7075 chips with addition of pure Al powder was recycled through powder
metallurgy method was conducted by Sherafat et al. [12]. Significantly, all the mentioned studies had avoided the
milling process in resulting more economic recycling process and huge area of application. With the high demand of
aluminium, thus, made the study of aluminium recycling becoming more and more interesting [10].
Powder metallurgy is described as the technique used to create metal powders by packing the metal with or
without addition of other material and heating them just beneath the melting temperature to strengthen the material.
Fundamentally, powder metallurgy comprises of straightforward technique beginning with production of powder,
powder blending or mixing with binders, trailed by compaction process into required shape, sintering process, and
end with optional secondary machining or finishing in producing a special property or improving the precision of
powder metallurgy product [13].
Thus this paper aims to investigate the sample works on recycled AA6061 chips and Al powder by combination
of powder metallurgy and compaction technique in order to study the characteristics of physical and mechanical
properties of composites body.

2. Working Procedures

2.1. Materials

In this study, AA6061 alloy with a theoretical density of 2.7 g/cm3 was used as the metal matrix material. The
AA6061 alloy blocks and Al powder with particles size of 25 microns were supplied by the Newspark Technology
and Chengdu Best New Materials Co., Ltd., China. The chemical composition (in wt.%) of the aluminium alloy
AA6061 are Si (0.59), Fe (0.092), Cu (0.289), Mn (0.08), Mg (0.975), Cr (0.2), Zn (0.031), Ti (0.1), and Al
(remnant). Only 1 wt.% of zinc stearate was used as a binder to make the compaction process easier [14].

2.2 Preparation of chips

Firstly, chips were produced by using CNC milling machine, type HSM (SODICK – MC430L) as shown in Fig.
1. The feed rate (1100 mm/min), depth of cut (1.0 mm), cutting velocity (345.4 m/min) were used as the parameters
of machine to produce the chips. The milled chips were then cleaned by ultrasonic bath apparatus type Fritsch. The
duration taken for each batch was about 1 hour. The liquid used to treat the chips was acetone solution in order to
Muhammad Irfan Ab Kadir et al. / Procedia Engineering 184 (2017) 687 – 694 689

remove oil, grease and any impurities left for 20 minutes. Lastly, the drying process used was with conventional
drying oven for 1 hour to dry up the acetone solution or any moisture left on the chips made earlier.

a b

Fig. 1. (a) High speed milling machine (SODICK – MC430L) and (b) aluminium chips produced.

2.3. Compaction process

The cold compaction process used was uniaxial hydraulic press machine. The hydraulic machine brand is Carver
model 3851-0. The powder was placed into the mould and the upper mould was plunged with load to be compressed
into a shape called green body [15]. The compaction load was set at 9 tons with holding time of 20 minutes [16].
The cleaned surfaces of die wall and tools (upper and lower punch) were sprayed with a lubricant-saturated solution
to ease the removal of sample. The classification of mixture between Al chip and powder is as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. The classification of samples in weight percentage.


Denotation Al chip (wt.%) Al powder (wt.%)
S1 100 0
S2 90 10
S3 70 30
S4 50 50
S5 30 70
S6 10 90
S7 0 100

2.4. Sintering process

Sintering process is to provide extra bonding between atoms. The atomic diffusion takes place and welded areas
formed during compaction will increase the connection by sintering process. This process was conducted in a tube
furnace machine. The specimens were heated by furnace in a controlled atmosphere. The model of tube furnace used
is HTF 1800 and Carbolite branded. This sintering was operated using Argon gas as an inert gas. The temperature
used in this process is 552˚C and the sintering profile as shown in Fig. 2 [17].
690 Muhammad Irfan Ab Kadir et al. / Procedia Engineering 184 (2017) 687 – 694

Fig. 2. Sintering profile [17].

3. Results and discussions

3.1. Microstructural analysis

The accomplishment of the recycling of chips by uniaxial cold compaction and sintering with the properties made
of the AA6061/Al powder samples depend strongly on the microstructural behaviour of it. The microstructures of
the sintered samples were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Fig. 3 shows the microstructure
of recycled AA6061/Al powder samples with different composition. The densification behaviour of the mixture
should be obvious between chip and powder depending on the compressibility of the AA6061 chips and powders
during cold compaction and sintering process. The magnifications were at 500X in order to view clear distinction
between chips and powder used on various loadings.
Sample S1 (full chips) illustrates the formation of large pores on the surface due to the void occurs when using
large chips size. While Al powders were added incrementally and combined with the chips, it can be seen that the
pores become less and the formation of grain boundaries also can be seen. The reason being is that the Al powders
tries to filling up the voids made by recycled AA6061 chips in forming a good surface on the sample. Meanwhile at
full Al powder (sample S7), even though the bonding and grain boundaries becomes more but there were still plenty
of small pores formation on the surface of sample. With the present of small particles size of Al powders, it will be
filling the pores while decrease the porosity between AA6061 chips and consequently increased the densification
behaviour of the chip–powder mixtures. The size of pores in the contact region of the AA6061 chips was very high,
and so the fine Al powders could easily fill these regions.
Consequently, increasing pore size was associated directly with an increase in the irregularity shape of the pores.
The different of recycled AA6061 chip sizes lead to higher porosity and random pore shapes. Thus, as further
addition of Al powder added into the sample caused in less pores creation, lesser average pore size, and more round
pore form [18].

(a) (b)

Porosity
Chip

Powder
Muhammad Irfan Ab Kadir et al. / Procedia Engineering 184 (2017) 687 – 694 691

(c) (d)

Chip
Porosity

Powder

(e) (f)
Chip Porosity

Powder

(g)

Powder

Fig. 3. Scanning electron microscopic images of AA6061 chips and powder samples after sintered: (a) S1, (b) S2, (c) S3, (d) S4, (e) S5, (f)
S6, and (g) S7

3.2. Physical properties

The connection between the density and apparent porosity of recycled AA6061/Al powder samples with different
proportions of chips and powder were recognised through Archimedes’ method. Accordingly, Fig. 4 delivers the
results of density and apparent porosity. From the graph in Fig 4, it is obvious that the density of sample full chips
and full powder shows the nearest value to theoretical density with 2.47 g/cm3 and 2.43 g/cm3 individually. While,
the density reduced gradually with the addition of 10 wt.% to 50 wt.% of Al powder. The density rises back at 70
wt.% content of Al powder until it reaches full Al powder because of bonding between particles are more possible.
Interestingly, apparent porosity showed an opposite effect of density because it always refers to the fraction or
percentage of pores within the volume of a porous solid. Here we can see that the highest porosity occurs when the
692 Muhammad Irfan Ab Kadir et al. / Procedia Engineering 184 (2017) 687 – 694

amount of Al chip was at 50 wt.%. The increasing of Al powder after 50 wt.% will reduce the percentage of porosity
and same effect also happens when increasing the quantity of Al chip.
Significantly, changes of density, apparent porosity and water absorption can be analysed as increasing sintered
density resulted in lower pore fraction.

2.5 12

2.45 10
Density (g/cm3)

Percentage (%)
8
2.4
6
2.35
4
2.3 2

2.25 0
0 10 30 50 70 90 100
The amount of Al Powder (wt%)
Density Apparent Porosity

Fig. 4. The changes of density (g/cm3), apparent porosity (%) and water absorption (%) with the increasing of Al powder content.

3.3. Microhardness

The hardness test was done to discover the level of hardness of the material surface by utilizing little load. In this
test, the hardness test was led by using the micro Vickers hardness machine in which the instrument comprises of a
hard and accurate head for enabling the penetrating in the material. An average value was taken from five values
from each sample. Fig. 5 exemplifies the relationship between hardness and various compositions of AA6061 chips
and Al powder content. The full chips showed the highest hardness at 65.6 Hv and gradually decreased with
increasing amount Al powder content. Whereas, the full Al powder gave the lowest hardness at 42.0 Hv.
Significantly, the hardness decreased with an increasing amount of Al powder. Having said that, the hardness
values showed an irregular distribution for all Al powder contents. It is clearly to understand that the Al powders can
move and reposition themselves between the Al chips, leading to an increase in the amount of porosity.

80.0
70.0
Microhardness (Hv)

60.0
50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
0 10 30 50 70 90 100
The amount of Al Powder (wt%)
Fig. 5. Microhardness (Hv) against ratios of recycled Al chips/Al powder samples.
Muhammad Irfan Ab Kadir et al. / Procedia Engineering 184 (2017) 687 – 694 693

3.4. Compression strength

Fig. 6 describes the relationship between the amount of Al powder added and compression strength for all the
suggested samples. The maximum stress obtained from each samples represent the compression strength of the
composite body. It is noted that the sample strength decreases with increasing of the amount of Al powder content in
each composition. Thus, it is clear from this when more Al powder content was added lead to weak bonding
between the particles while at less powder consequently provide more chip content has high bonding.
The maximum compression strength was at full chip content with 307.72 MPa. Meanwhile the lowest value for
compression strength was at full Al powder content with 75.68 MPa. This result also tallies with the microhardness
test whereby full Al chips showed the highest hardness and gradually decreased with increasing Al powder content.
The Al powders can move and reposition themselves between the Al chips an acted to be brittle due to fact of poor
bonding between each particle. Meanwhile, the full Al chips will give ductility properties to the sample and manage
to withstand high stress before it fails at one point.

350
Maximum Stress (MPa)

300
250
200
150
100
50
0
0 10 30 50 70 90 100
The amount of Al powder content (wt%)

Fig. 6. Microhardness (Hv) against the amount of Al powder content.

4. Conclusion

Based on the production and characterization of sample made of recycled AA6061 chips and Al powders, the
following conclusions can be drawn. The addition of Al powder managed to form a good microstructure with less
formation of large pores on the surface of a sample. The sintered density of sample full chips and full powder shows
the closest value to theoretical at 2.47 g/cm3 and 2.42 g/cm3 respectively. Significantly, changes of density, apparent
porosity and water absorption can be analysed as increasing sintered density resulted in lower porosity. Meanwhile,
the full Al chips showed the highest hardness at 65.6 Hv and gradually decreased with increasing Al powder content
while, the full Al powder gave the lowest hardness at 42.0 Hv due to the rearrangement of Al powder between the
AA6061 chips. Whereby, the maximum compression strength was at fully chip content at 307.7 MPa and the lowest
value was at full Al powder at 75.68 MPa. The compression strength decreases with increasing amount of Al
powder content due to the weak bonding between the particles.

Acknowledgement

This work is supported by the fundamental research grant scheme (FRGS) under vot 1596. The authors would also
like to acknowledge the assistance provided by Office for Research, Innovation, Commercialization and
Consultancy Management (ORICC) and Graduates Studies Centre of Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia

References

[1] J. A. S. Green, Aluminum recycling and processing for energy conservation and sustainability. ASM International, 2007.
694 Muhammad Irfan Ab Kadir et al. / Procedia Engineering 184 (2017) 687 – 694

[2] G. Gaustad, E. Olivetti, and R. Kirchain, “Economic and environmental evaluation of various aluminum scrap upgrading options using
chance constrained optimization modeling,” in Global symposium on recycling, waste treatment, and clean technology (REWAS), 2008.
[3] C. S. Sharma, T. Nakagawa, and N. Takenaka, “Recent development in the recycling of machining swarfs by sintering and powder forging,”
Ann Cirp, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 121–125, 1977.
[4] J. Gronostajski and a. Matuszak, “Recycling of metals by plastic deformation: an example of recycling of aluminium and its alloys chips,” J.
Mater. Process. Technol., vol. 92–93, pp. 35–41, 1999.
[5] J. Gronostajski, H. Marciniak, and a. Matuszak, “New methods of aluminium and aluminium-alloy chips recycling,” J. Mater. Process.
Technol., vol. 106, pp. 34–39, 2000.
[6] M. Haase and A. E. Tekkaya, “Cold extrusion of hot extruded aluminum chips,” J. Mater. Process. Technol., vol. 217, pp. 356–367, 2015.
[7] H. Mindivan, H. Cimenoglu, and E. S. Kayali, “" Ataturk University; Engineering Faculty, Department of Metallurgy Engineering,” TMS
(The Miner. Met. Met. Soc., vol. 3, 2009.
[8] J. B. Fogagnolo, E. M. Ruiz-Navas, M. A. Simón, and M. A. Martinez, “Recycling of aluminium alloy and aluminium matrix composite
chips by pressing and hot extrusion,” J. Mater. Process. Technol., vol. 143, pp. 792–795, 2003.
[9] I. Kačmarčik, T. Pepelnjak, and M. Plančak, “Solid State Recycling by Cold Compression of Al-Alloy Chips,” J. Technol. Plast., vol. 37, no.
1, 2012.
[10] H. A. Mashhadi, A. Moloodi, M. Golestanipour, and E. Z. V Karimi, “Recycling of aluminium alloy turning scrap via cold pressing and
melting with salt flux,” J. Mater. Process. Technol., vol. 209, no. 7, pp. 3138–3142, 2009.
[11] M. Schikorra, K. Pantke, A. E. Tekkaya, and D. Biermann, “Re-use of AA6060, AA6082, and AA7075 aluminum turning chips by hot
extrusion,” Adv. Technol. Plast. 2008, p. 371, 2008.
[12] Z. Sherafat, M. H. Paydar, and R. Ebrahimi, “Fabrication of Al7075/Al, two phase material, by recycling Al7075 alloy chips using powder
metallurgy route,” J. Alloys Compd., vol. 487, no. 1, pp. 395–399, 2009.
[13] P. C. Angelo and R. Subramanian, Powder metallurgy: science, technology and applications. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd., 2008.
[14] A. S. Mahdi, M. S. Mustapa, M. A. Lajis, and M. W. Abd Rashid, “Effect of Holding Time on Mechanical Properties of Recycling
Aluminium Alloy AA6061 Through Ball Mill Process,” Int. J. Mech. Eng. Technol., vol. 6, no. 9, pp. 133–142, 2015.
[15] E. Paul Degarmo, J. T. Black, and A. K. Ronald, “Materials and processes in manufacturing,” Eight Ed. Prentice–Hall India, 1997.
[16] A. S. Mahdi, M. S. Mustapa, M. A. Lajis, M. Warikh, and A. Rashid, “Effect of Compaction Pressure on Physical Properties of Milled
Aluminium Chip ( AA6061 ),” Int. J. Sci. Res., vol. 4, no. 9, pp. 1759–1764, 2015.
[17] M. S. Mustapa, A. S. Mahdi, and M. A. Lajis, “Physical Properties of Recycling Milled Aluminium Chip ( AA6061 ) for Various Sintering
Temperature,” Int. J. Mech. Ind. Technol., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 33–40, 2016.
[18] W. B. James and H. Corporation, “Powder Metallurgy Methods and Applications,” in ASM Handbook Volume 7: Powder Metallurgy, vol. 7,
C. and J. W. N. Prasan K. Samal, Ed. ASM International, 2015, p. 9–19(11).

You might also like