Study of B4C/Al-Mg-Si Composites as Highly Hard and Corrosion-Resistant Materials for Industrial Applications

The development of materials having high mechanical strength and corrosion resistance property is of much interest for applications in automobile, defense and marine industries. This research article investigates the electrochemical and mechanical behaviors of B4C/Al-Mg-Si composites fabricated by using the powder metallurgy method. The fabricated composites which consist of 3.5, 7.0 and 10.5 wt% of B4C reinforcement particles showed a uniform distribution. In order to find the effects of corrosion and mechanical properties of the produced composites, potentiodynamic polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and Vickers micro-hardness (HV) measurements were carried out. The results revealed that the corrosion resistance decreases with the increasing B4C content, while hardness of the composite increases. Additionally, a technique was employed to improve the corrosion resistance as well as hardness of the composite. The results also demonstrate the mechanisms of the corrosion, high hardness and their improvement in the composites