Title: A high strength and wear resisting AA5083 alloy for armoured vehicle applications: structure property correlation

Authors: T. Venugopal; P. Chandramohan

Addresses: Department of Mechatronics Engineering, Hindusthan College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore – 641032, Tamilnadu, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College, Coimbatore – 641022, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract: An alloy with high strength is constantly desired without increasing the weight to enhance the performance of armoured vehicles. In this study, an ultra-fine grain (UFG) structured AA-5083 aluminium alloy, developed using equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) under route RA, is employed to study its microstructural evolution and mechanical behaviour. The ECAPed AA-5083 alloy exhibits considerable microstructural refinement, and its influence is corroborated with the hardness, compression and wear behaviour of the base alloy. A significant grain size reduction is observed in both extrusion and transverse direction of processed AA-5083 alloy compared with base alloy. The ECAPed AA-5083 alloy exhibits higher compressive strength and hardness values than its base alloy. The wear studies have been performed using Taguchi L9 orthogonal array, to understand the influence of grain size on the wear behaviour and a superior wear resistance was found in the extrusion direction of ECAPed AA-5083 alloy.

Keywords: AA-5083; ECAP; equal channel angular pressing; wear; compression and hardness; armoured vehicles; ultra-fine grain.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.2020.104411

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 2020 Vol.27 No.1/2, pp.164 - 179

Received: 27 Feb 2018
Accepted: 17 May 2018
Published online: 10 Jan 2020 *

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