A statistical analysis on erosion wear behaviour of A356 alloy reinforced with in situ formed TiB<inf>2</inf> particles

Solid particle erosion wear behaviour of A356 and A356/TiB2 in situ composites has been studied. A356 alloy reinforced with in situ TiB2 particles was fabricated by the reaction of halide salts with aluminium melt and the formation of Al3Ti brittle phase is completely suppressed. The composites show good grain refinement of α-Al and modification of eutectic Si. These in situ composites show high hardness and better erosion resistance than the base alloy. Though the sizes of in situ formed TiB2 reinforcement particles are smaller than the erodent SiC particles, TiB2 particles are able to effectively resist the erodent particles. Design of experiment has been used to run the solid particle erosion experiment. An attempt has also been made to develop a mathematical model by using regression analysis. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique is applied to check the validity of the developed model. Student's t-test is utilized to find out the significance of factors. The wear mechanism has been studied by analyzing the surface of the worn specimen using scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.