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Aluminum nanocomposites having wear resistance better than stainless steel

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Abstract

Tribological behavior of alumina-particle-reinforced aluminum composites made by powder metallurgy process has been investigated. The nanocomposite containing 15 vol% of Al2O3 nanoparticles exhibits excellent wear resistance by showing significantly low wear rate and abrasive wear mode. The wear rate of the nanocomposite is even lower than stainless steel. We have also demonstrated that such excellent wear resistance only occurred in the composite reinforced with the high volume fraction of nanosized reinforcing particles. The results were discussed in terms of the microstructure of the nanocomposite.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Science Foundation of United States (CMMI-0800086) and Hundred Person Program of Chinese Academy of Science. A portion of this research was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Vehicle Technologies, as part of the High Temperature Materials Laboratory User Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center, Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, 32826, USA

    Linan An, Jinling Liu & Chengying Xu

  2. Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 37831, USA

    Jun Qu & Peter J. Blau

  3. Laboratory of Excited State Processes, Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130033, China

    Jinsong Luo, Yi Fan & Ligong Zhang

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  1. Linan An
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  2. Jun Qu
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  3. Jinsong Luo
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  4. Yi Fan
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  5. Ligong Zhang
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  6. Jinling Liu
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  7. Chengying Xu
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  8. Peter J. Blau
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Correspondence to Linan An.

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The purpose of this Materials Communications section is to provide accelerated publication of important new results in the fields regularly covered by Journal of Materials Research. Materials Communications cannot exceed four printed pages in length, including space allowed for title, figures, tables, references, and an abstract limited to about 100 words.

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An, L., Qu, J., Luo, J. et al. Aluminum nanocomposites having wear resistance better than stainless steel. Journal of Materials Research 26, 2479–2483 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2011.263

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2011.263

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