Development and Characterization of Aluminum Bronze Alloy Bush Sleeve Using Horizontal Centrifugal Casting

Aluminum Bronze bushing sleeves or sleeve bearings are used in the various parts of vehicles like camshaft bushing, suspensions, shock absorber, gears and strut bushes for anti-wear, anti-friction and for bearings high tensile loads. This research presents a comprehensive study on the development of Aluminum bronze bushing sleeves using horizontal centrifugal casting method. The effect of centrifugal casting parameters i.e. molds rotation speed, melt temperature, alloy composition and heat treatment optimizes mechanical properties and also microstructure of developed bushing sleeves. These bushing sleeves with desired composition have been developed by using induction furnace to reduce its import and to save foreign exchange. Different samples were casted by using horizontal centrifugal casting machine by varying parameters like rotation speed of mold and pouring temperature of melt in order to get good quality bushing sleeve. The addition of trace elements like Manganese, Iron, nickel and Zinc optimize the mechanical properties of bushing sleeves for particular application in elevating and depressing mechanism of heavy vehicles. The developed material was characterized by using different characterization techniques like Spectroscopy (OES), wet analysis, mechanical testing, optical microscope and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM).