Experimental investigation on the compressibility of Al/Al2O3 nanocomposites

The scientific importance of nanocomposites is being increased due to their improved properties. This paper introduces an experimental investigation on the relationship between the reinforcement weight fraction and compressibility of Al/Al2O3 during high energy ball milling. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to characterise the produced powder. The results showed that the grain size of milled powders was about 43 nm with a noticeable presence of agglomerates at 10 wt.% of Al2O3. By increasing Al2O3 weight fraction to 12% the decrease in grain size was very. With up to 12 wt.% of Al2O3, microhardness increases from 62 to 150 HV due to the decrease of the crystallite size. The compressibility behaviour of the nanocomposite powder was decreased slowly by increasing Al2O3 content due to work hardening on the matrix powder.