Modeling of wear performance and surface roughness of AA6061-T6/B₄C composite under dry sliding conditions by RSM

The present study is an attempt to investigate the tribological behavior of friction stir processing (FSP) AA6061-T6 alloy reinforced with boron carbide (B4C) particles. The surface composites were developed to investigate wear performance and surface roughness under dry sliding conditions. The experiments were conducted using response surface methodology (RSM) to examine the effects of various B4C volume fractions, applied loads, and sliding distances. All combinations of reinforcements in AA6061-T6 hybrid composites show a good improvement in the wear properties. The results show that the wear behavior of composites is significantly impacted by the incorporation of B4C particles. This is mostly owing to the uniformity that the B4C particles developed when they distributed the reinforcements evenly in the AA 6061-T6 matrix. Analysis of variance, main effect and three-dimensional plots were used to quantify the effects of dry sliding parameters on tribological properties. The findings showed that the optimal parameters for the effective reduction of specific wear rate and coefficient of friction were a volume fraction of 10%, an applied load of 20 N, and a sliding distance of 500 m. To minimize surface roughness, the optimal test conditions were found to be 10% volume fraction, 40 N applied load, and 2500 m sliding distance. The wear surface was analyzed using energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDX) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results showed that oxide layer formation was present on the wear surface and adhesive wear was the primary wear mechanism.