Static Analysis of Aluminum Alloy Ingot/Zirconium Diboride Composites for Automotive Applications

<div>The aim of this work is to develop a composite material and investigate its mechanical characteristics especially suited for automotive applications, and finite element analysis (FEA) of fabricated composite is carried out to examine the mechanical behavior of composites. Utilizing aluminum alloy ingot (LM13) as the matrix material and zirconium diboride (ZrB<sub>2</sub>) as reinforcement, this work creates composites with improved mechanical and physical properties by accounting impact, tensile, compression, and hardness behavior. FEA is used to examine the increasing behavior of material properties for various volume segments of reinforcement (2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10 wt%) that are supplied to the matrix to determine an acceptable volume percentage of composite based on their input features. In FEA, the impact, tensile, compression, and hardness characteristics of the composite model are investigated by considering von Mises stress, equivalent elastic strain, and total deformation. The experimental results show that the hardness increased by up to 82.5% when 10 wt% of ZrB<sub>2</sub> was added to the LM13 aluminum matrix. The tensile, impact, and compressive behavior of composites reinforced with the same weight percentage of ZrB<sub>2</sub> similarly exhibit a rising trend, with percentages of 28.03%, 73.3%, and 25.09% correspondingly. The FEA results also show that the addition of 10 wt% ZrB<sub>2</sub> to the matrix model enhances the overall mechanical properties, and the same (10 wt%) composition of the composite model is recommended for automotive applications. Metal matrix composites based on aluminum alloy are widely used as engineering materials in the automotive, aerospace, marine, defense, and aircraft industries due to their superior mechanical and physical properties.</div>