Dry sliding wear behavior of spray deposited AlCuMn alloy and AlCuMn/SiCp composite

The dry sliding wear behavior of spray-deposited Al-Cu-Mn alloy and its composite reinforced with 13 vol.% SiC particles have been studied in the applied load of 5-400 N (corresponding normal stress is 0.1-8 MPa). It showed that SiC particle-reinforced AlCuMn composite produced by spray deposition process exhibited an improved wear resistance at the entire applied load range in comparison to the monolithic alloy. However, this improvement was not significant in the overall load range. With increasing the applied load, the wear rate of the composite and the monolithic alloy exhibited four different regions, therefore the wear was dominated by different wear mechanism. The former three regions all belonged to mild wear. The transition from mild to severe wear occurred at the similar critical load for both the composite and the monolithic alloy. For both the composite and the monolithic alloy, with increasing applied load, the dominant wear mechanism exhibited successively: oxidative mechanism, delamination mechanism, subsurface-cracking-assisted adhesive mechanism and adhesive mechanism. (C) 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.