ABSTRACT

In recent decades, aerospace and automobile designers are looking for high
performance materials. This requirement drives scientists to shift focus on composite materials
from conventional monolithic metallic alloys. Among the metals, copper is one of the most
commonly used alloy in aerospace, turbines and automobile industries.

Among the Copper alloys, Aluminium bronze (C954) alloy is used for various
applications due to its high strength, high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance and
excellent fatigue strength. Currently this alloy is extensively used in turbine blades, bearings and
landing gear components of an aircraft. Thus, C954 alloy is selected in the present work.

In light of the facts many researchers developed the Cu/ZrO2 MMC’s and very few
developed Cu/ZrO2/Graphite HMMC’s and reported the wear behavior and machining
characteristics in MMC’s. But no wear and machining characteristics reports on
Cu/ZrO2/Graphite flakes reinforced composite and to bring clear understanding on mechanical
and wear behavior of copper HMMC’s, the present work is designed.

MMC’s find many applications in the field of automobiles, aerospace and in

engineering sectors because of its light weight, high temperature resistance and high strength.
This work demonstrates the benefits from usagecomponents of an aircraft where sliding contact
is expected to explore the best properties of Cu/Zr of HMMC’s in various applications like
turbine blades, bearings, valves, landing gear O2/Graphite flakes hybrid composites.

In the present work, the Hybrid MMC’s was developed by stir casting technique. The
mechanical properties like hardness, tensile strength, compression strength and wear behavior of
Aluminium bronze (C954) reinforced with Zirconia (ZrO2) and graphite flakes hybrid metal
matrix composites (HMMC’s) were determined.