Effect of Copper Addition on Tensile Behaviour of Al-Cu Alloy Used in High Temperature Applications

Aluminium (Al) alloys are now-a-days used starting from aerospace, automotive body panel, to kitchen ware especially due to their high strength to weight ratio. Aluminium having copper as major alloying element exhibit good mechanical properties at room as well as at high temperature working conditions. But presence of silicon in these alloys adversely affect the strength at high temperature. The current paper analyses change in microstructure and it’s effect on mechanical properties of Aluminium-Copper(Al-Cu) alloy with varying wt% of copper. The Al-Cu alloy developed for study contain silicon as trace element only. Tests carried out to evaluate the impact of such variations on tensile and metallurgical behaviour at room temperature. Analysis of microstructure change with varying wt% of Copper is studied which goes well with the tensile data recorded. Effect of heat treatment (T6) on tensile properties was studied. The tensile results both as cast and heat treated suggest Al-Cu alloy containing 8wt% of Copper as the optimum composition.