Abstract
Lighter and more powerful next generation vehicles and other rotary machinery demand bearings to operate in harsher conditions for higher efficiency, and the continuous development of advanced low-wear and friction materials is thus becoming even more important to meet these requirements. New aluminium composites reinforced with high performance lubricate phases such as graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) are very promising and have been vigorously investigated. By maintaining a low coefficient of friction (COF) and offering great strength against wear due to their self-lubricating capability, the solid lubricant like GNPs protect the bearing surface from wear damage and prevent change in metallurgical properties during temperature fluctuations. This paper first studies the high-temperature tribological performance of aluminium matrix composites reinforced with GNP, consolidated via powder metallurgy, then elucidates their tribological mechanism. We report that the best tribological performance is achieved by the composite containing 2.0 wt% GNP, with an extraordinarily low COF of 0.09 and a specific wear rate of 3.5×10−2 mm3·N−1·m−1, which represent 75% and 40% reduction respectively, against the plain aluminium consolidated under identical conditions. The in-track and out-of-track Raman analysis have confirmed the role of GNPs in creating a tribofilm on the counterpart surface which contributed to the excellent performance.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Rapoport L, Bilik Y, Feldman Y, Homyonfer M, Cohen S R, Tenne R. Hollow nanoparticles of WS2 as potential solid-state lubricants. Nature 387(6635): 791–793 (1997)
Vencl A, Rac A, Bobić I. Tribological behaviour of Al-based MMCs and their application in automotive industry. Tribol Ind 26(3–4): 31–38 (2004)
Abrell J. Regulating CO2 emissions of transportation in Europe: A CGE-analysis using market-based instruments. Transp Res Part D Transp Environ 15(4): 235–239 (2010)
Ramakrishnan G, Vijaya Ramnath B, Naveen E, Gowtham S, Aran Kumar A, Muthuvel M S, Akil R A review on aluminium metal matrix composites. Adv Sci Eng Med 10(3): 263–267 (2018)
Shorowordi K M, Laoui T, Haseeb A S M A, Celis J P, Froyen L. Microstructure and i1nterface characteristics of B4C, SiC and Al2O3 reinforced Al matrix composites: A comparative study J Mater Process Technol 142(3): 738–743 (2003)
Divagar S, Vigneshwar M, Selvamani S T. Impacts of nano particles on fatigue strength of aluminum based metal matrix composites for aerospace. Mater Today Proc 3(10): 3734–3739 (2016)
Wang H M, Yu R L, Li S Q. Microstructure and tribological properties of laser clad NiO/Al2O3 self-lubrication wear-resistant ceramic matrix composite coatings. Tribol 22(SUPPL): 157–160 (2002)
Cui J, Roven H J. Recycling of automotive aluminum. Trans Nonferrous Met Soc China 20(11): 2057–2063 (2010)
Miller W S. Recent development in aluminium alloys for the automotive industry. Mater Sci Eng A 280(1): 37–49 (2000)
Rengifo S, Zhang C, Harimkar S, Boesl B, Agarwal A. Effect of WS2 addition on tribological behavior of aluminum at room and elevated temperatures. Tribol Lett 65(3): 1–10 (2017)
Reeves C J, Menezes P L. Advancement in eco-friendly lubricants for tribological applications: Past, present, and future. In Materials Forming, Machining and Tribology. Davim J, Ed. Ecotribology: Springer, 2016: 41–61.
Lin C B, Chang R J, Weng W P. A study on process and tribological behavior of Al alloy/Gr.(p) composite. Wear 217(2): 167–174 (1998)
Tiwari S K, Sahoo S, Wang N, Huczko A. Graphene research and their outputs: Status and prospect. J Sci Adv Mater Devices 5(1): 10–29 (2020)
Tjong S C. Recent progress in the development and properties of novel metal matrix nanocomposites reinforced with carbon nanotubes and graphene nanosheets. Mater Sci Eng R Reports 74(10): 281–350 (2013)
Zhang Y Y, Wang C M, Cheng Y, Xiang Y. Mechanical properties of bilayer graphene sheets coupled by sp3 bonding. Carbon 49(13): 4511–4517 (2011)
Tabandeh-Khorshid M, Omrani E, Menezes P L, Rohatgi P K. Tribological performance of self-lubricating aluminum matrix nanocomposites: Role of graphene nanoplatelets. Eng Sci Technol an Int J 19(1): 463–469 (2016)
Mazen A A, Ahmed A Y. Mechanical behavior of Al-Al2O3 MMC manufactured by PM techniques part I—Scheme I processing parameters. J Mater Eng Perform 7(3): 393–401 (1998)
Ibrahim I A, Mohamed F A, Lavernia E J. Particulate reinforced metal matrix composites—A review. J Mater Sci 26(5): 1137–1156 (1991)
Liu Y B, Lim S C, Lu L, Lai M O. Recent development in the fabrication of metal matrix-particulate composites using powder metallurgy techniques. J Mater Sci 29(8): 1999–2007 (1994)
Torralba J M, Da Costa C E, Velasco F. P/M aluminum matrix composites: An overview. J Mater Process Technol 133(1–2): 203–206 (2003)
Ghazaly A, Seif B, Salem H G. Mechanical and tribological properties of AA2124-graphene self lubricating nanocomposite. In The Minerals, Metals and Materials Series. Sadler B A, Ed. Light Metals: Springer, 2013: 411–115.
Nassar A E, Nassar E E. Properties of aluminum matrix Nano composites prepared by powder metallurgy processing. J King Saud Univ-Eng Sci 29(3): 295–299 (2017)
Santhanakrishnan Balakrishnan V, Wartig K, Tsombanis N, Seidlitz H. Influence of processing parameters on the impact behaviour of glass/polyamide-6 composite. Compos Part B Eng 159: 292–299 (2019)
Min K H, Kang S P, Kim D G, Do Kim Y. Sintering characteristic of Al2O3-reinforced 2xxx series Al composite powders. J Alloys Compd 400(1–2): 150–153 (2005)
Aydin F, Sun Y, Emre Turan M. The effect of TiB2 content on wear and mechanical behavior of AZ91 magnesium matrix composites produced by powder metallurgy. Powder Metall Met Ceram 57(9–10): 564–572 (2019)
Ye T, Xu Y, Ren J. Effects of SiC particle size on mechanical properties of SiC particle reinforced aluminum metal matrix composite. Mater Sci Eng A 753: 146–155 (2019)
Tian C, Li X, Li H, Guo G, Wang L, Rong Y. The effect of porosity on the mechanical property of metal-bonded diamond grinding wheel fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM). Mater Sci Eng A 743: 697–706 (2019)
Deng C F, Wang D Z, Zhang X X, Li A B. Processing and properties of carbon nanotubes reinforced aluminum composites. Mater Sci Eng A 444(1–2): 138–145 (2007)
Deng C F, Ma Y X, Zhang P, Zhang X X, Wang D Z. Thermal expansion behaviors of aluminum composite reinforced with carbon nanotubes. Mater Lett 62(15): 2301–2303 (2008)
Uher C. Thermal conductivity of high-Tc superconductors. J Supercond 3(4): 337–389 (1990)
Academy T, Academy R, Trakt S S, Morelli D T, Slack G A. High lattice thermal conductivity solids. In: High thermal conductivity materials. Sbhsh L S, Jitendra S G, Eds. Berlin: Springer, 2006.
Saboori A, Novara C, Pavese M, Badini C, Giorgis F, Fino P. An investigation on the sinterability and the compaction behavior of aluminum/graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) prepared by powder metallurgy. J Mater Eng Perform 26(3): 993–999 (2017)
Rengifo S, Zhang C, Harimkar S, Boesl B, Agarwal A. Tribological behavior of spark plasma sintered aluminum-graphene composites at room and elevated temperatures. Technologies 5(1): 4 (2017)
Wu P, Li X M, Zhang C H, Chen X C, Lin S Y, Sun H Y, Lin C T, Zhu H W, Luo J B. Self-assembled graphene film as low friction solid lubricant in macroscale contact. ACS Appl Mater Interfaces 9(25): 21554–21562 (2017)
Malard L M, Pimenta M A, Dresselhaus G, Dresselhaus M S. Raman spectroscopy in graphene. Phys Rep 473(5–6): 51–87 (2009)
Chen B, Li S F, Imai H, Jia L, Umeda J, Takahashi M, Kondoh K. An approach for homogeneous carbon nanotube dispersion in Al matrix composites. Mater Des 72: 1–8 (2015)
Venezuela P, Lazzeri M, Mauri F. Theory of double-resonant Raman spectra in graphene: Intensity and line shape of defect-induced and two-phonon bands. Phys Rev B-Condens. Matter Mater Phys 84(3): 1–25 (2011)
Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the “The Royal Society” (INF\PHD\180005).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
Additional information
Sunil POUDEL. He is a Ph.D. student at the University of Exeter, sponsored by The Royal Society’s Industrial Studentship. His research mainly focuses on the fabrication of advanced composite materials and assessment of their tribological performance towards engineering applications. He received B.Sc. in physics (2010) and M.Sc. in physics (2015) with advance soild state as a major from Tribhuvan University.
Yanqiu ZHU. He, Royal Society Industry Fellow (RSIF), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), Fellow of The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM), earned his doctorate from Tsinghua University (China) in 1996. He then joined the Sussex Fullerene Centre at the University of Sussex (UK) immediately after a short tenure as a Centre of Excellence (COE) Fellow at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS, Tsukuba, Japan). As an Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) Advanced Research Fellow he moved to The University of Nottingham in 2003 until he took the chair position at the University of Exeter in 2010. His research covers a wide area of nanomaterials and nanocomposites.
Yi ZHANG. He is the manager and division head of research and development at the European Technical Centre for Daido Metal Group. In research, development and innovation, he has spent more than 15 years creating new materials and surface technologies for tribological applications in automobiles and large-bore powertrains.
Electronic Supplementary Material
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Poudel, S., Bajwa, R., Xia, Y. et al. Tribological properties of Al-GNP composites at elevated temperature. Friction 12, 1028–1041 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-023-0839-2
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-023-0839-2