Effect of Ni Addition on the Hardness and Tensile Strength of Al – Cu Alloy Prepared by Powder Metallurgy Technique

Abstract

Aluminium alloys are becoming potential engineering materials offering excellent combination of properties such as high specific strength, high specific stiffness, electrical and thermal conductivities, low coefficient of thermal expansion and wear resistance. Generally, copper and nickel were used as alloying elements in aluminium alloy to increase high temperature strength.Both powder metallurgy as well as casting techniques is used to produce Al-Cu-Ni alloys.However, P/M technique is better suited for preparing this alloy, since large density difference and low mutual solubility of aluminium and Ni presents problem in obtaining uniform dispersion of Ni in aluminium alloys using the casting techniques.This paper gives an experimental work done in the material science laboratory, department of Mechanical Engineering, IDEAL Institute, Ghaziabad, which shows the hardness and tensile strength of the sintered Al-Cu-Ni alloys as a function of temperature and compaction pressure.