Characterization of Aluminium Alloy Coated Steel Made Using Friction Surfacing Method

Steel is the most commonly used material in industrial processes like automobile, nuclear power plants and gas turbine industries etc. But it undergoes degradation due to severe operating conditions like high temperature, pressure, large stress, adverse effect of medium etc. To overcome this drawbacks aluminum alloy deposition is carried out using Friction surfacing method. Friction surfacing is a solid state process and it is used here to deposit aluminum alloy 6061 on mild steel. Optimum friction surface processing parameters are axial force, spindle rotation speed and tool transverse speed. Three different samples were made by changing the process parameters. All samples were heat treated in an open atmosphere at 700 °C and 730 °C for 2 hrs. Micro structural analysis, hardness measurement and scratch resistant measurement are conducted using Scanning Electron Microscope equipped with EDS, Vicker’s micro hardness tester and Linear Scratch testing machine respectively. Results shows that there is a formation of Fe-Al intermetallic compounds after heat treatment on the aluminide layer and it had very high hardness. And scratch test analysis showed that heat treated samples possessed higher scratch hardness than non-heat treated samples.