Design and fabrication of an alumina reinforced aluminum composite material

A low cost bonding technique of hot-cold rolling was used to fabricate an aluminum matrix composite dispersed with three different volume fractions of alumina platelets. It was found that the increase in both the elastic modulus and the tensile strength of the composite was significant as compared with that of the aluminum matrix. A numerical investigation into the mechanism of reinforcement was made in order to optimize the material design. Finite element analysis was carried out for a representative unit cell of the composite using the elastic-plastic theory. The effects of reinforcement volume fraction and other geometric parameters of the reinforcement on the local stress fields, the elastic modulus and the elastic-plastic properties of the composite were evaluated. The calculated elastic modulus agrees very well with the experimental results. The numerical calculations also provide many other valuable insights into the design of the composite material.