Improvement of aluminium alloy properties with aids of elements generated from cow horn additive

Abstract

The researchers in the area of material science have employed various agricultural wastes to improve the properties of aluminium alloys. They took advantage of various elements present in these wastes to enhance the properties of aluminium alloy. The choice of materials should always depend on their capability in term of elements present in them. Inability to choose a material wisely may result into total failure of the components. Materials possess various properties ranging from mechanical properties such as tensile strength and impact strength to electrical properties such as thermal conductivity. Also, some materials have been identified to be deficient in certain areas such as low thermal conductivity, high wear rate, poor ductility, poor machinability, and weak strength, due to some elements present in them. In the present study, aluminium scraps (secondary aluminium) was used as base material and reinforced with locally available inexpensive cow horn particulate (agricultural wastes) of 3, 6, 9 and 12% by weight of aluminium to develop an improved material taking the advantage of the elements present in the reinforcing material. The spectrographic analysis was conducted to determine the chemical compositions of all the specimens, which shows various elements present in control sample and CHp reinforced aluminium alloy. Aluminium is in the range 91.3 - 93.0%, followed by silicon with 4.36 - 5.01%, other elements present include iron, copper, magnesium, manganese, chromium, nickel, zinc, titanium, lead and others. The elements present in each sample were studied and application areas of each sample were suggested.