Abstract— Recycling of aluminum alloys has been shown to

provide major economic and environmental benefits. In addition to

energy savings, increasing the use of recycled metal is also quite

important from an ecological standpoint. This research work has

investigated the use of these broken bottles and glasses as

reinforcement material for the production of particles reinforced

aluminum scrap matrix composite.

This work focuses on the fabrication of aluminum alloy matrix

composites reinforced with 5,10,15,20 wt% glass particulates of

90 μm using stir casting route. The mechanical properties like

ultimate tensile strength, ultimate compressive strength, percentage

elongation and impact energy of the unreinforced alloy and

composites have been measured. The microstructure and mechanical

properties of the fabricated composite were analyzed.

The results have shown an increasing in mechanical properties

such as ultimate tensile strength, compression strength and at the

expense of percentage elongation and impact energy for composite

material with increasing reinforcement materials content.

Microstructural studies have been carried out to understand the nature

of structure.

Keywords— Aluminium Alloy, Al Scrap, Mechanical

Properties, Wasted Glasses.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE composites posses improved physical and mechanical

properties such as superior strength to weight ratio, good

ductility, high strength and modulus, low thermal

expansion coefficient, excellent wear resistance, corrosion

resistance, high temperature creep resistance and better fatigue

strength. Metal-Matrix Composites (MMCs) are most

promising in achieving enhanced mechanical properties.

Aluminium Matrix Composites (AMCs) reinforced with

particles and whiskers are widely used for high performance

applications such as in automotive, military, aerospace and

electricity industries because of improved mechanical

properties [1 ].

Aluminium has been recycled since its first commercial

production and today recycled aluminium accounts for one-

third of global aluminium consumption. Anything made of

aluminium can be recycled repeatedly; not only cans, but also

Dr. Jameel Habeeb Ghazi, College of Materials Engineering, Babylon

University, Iraq. e-mail: (Jameel_h64@yahoo.com). phone:0096478 01633179.

aluminium foil, plates, window frames, garden furniture and

automotive components can be melted down and re-used.

Aluminium is a sustainable material, whose recyclability and

applications justify the high energy requirement of primary

aluminium production. The transport sector is ore cast to be

the most rapidly expanding end-use sector due to the

lightweight and energy saving qualities of the material.

Aluminium is relatively unique in being highly economic to

recycle. Metal can be reclaimed and refined for further use at

an energy cost of only 5 per cent of that required to produce

the same quantity of aluminium from its ore. There has been a

healthy secondary metal industry for many years and as

refining techniques improve the use that can be made of

reclaimed aluminium will increase from its present usage in

Europe of 40% of all metal currently processed [2,3].

Glasses fall within the subgroup of ceramics called

amorphous ceramics. They include those as ‘obsidian’ which

occur naturally, and man-made glasses used for the

manufacture of bottles, windows and lenses. Recycling of the

broken glasses for production of new products could reduce

the challenge posed to the environment by this form of solid

waste. Unfortunately this form of solid waste is not

biodegradable neither is it water soluble. The option left is

therefore recycling to clear it from the environment [4].

Different methods have been adopted for fabrication of

metal matrix composites. Among them, the conventional

foundry based processes are more favorable in obtaining near

net shape components at high production rates and low costs.

In recent years, the stir casting technique has attracted the

interest of many researchers. Rheocasting, Compo casting,

Disintegrated melt deposition are the variants of the stir

casting technique. This Technique involves incorporating the

ceramic particles into the melt and stirring by means of

mechanical impeller [5].

Paul et al. reported a higher tensile strength and hardness

for (AMCs/glass) composites [4]. Prabhakar K. studied

mechanical properties of E-glass short fibers and fly ash

reinforced Al 7075 hybrid (MMCs), The results of their

investigation are found to have improved tensile strength and

compression strength of composite [6]. Aluminum alloy (356)

reinforced glass and graphite particle tend to offer

enhancement properties proceed by vortex method [7]. Some

of the author have investigated the effect of thermal ageing on

mechanical and microstructural properties of Al/glass [8],[9].

Fabrication and Mechanical Properties of

Economic Composite Materials Using

Alumimium Scrap and Wasted Glass

Dr. Jameel Habeeb Ghazi Al-Imari

T

3rd International Conference on Mechanical, Automobile and Robotics Engineering (ICMAR'2014) Feb. 11-12, 2014 Singapore

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This work adopts production economic composite material

from aluminium alloy scrap and broken bottles by stir casting

technique and improving mechanical properties of composite.

Therefore the consumption of aluminium scrap and bottles

broken thereby reducing the load of the solid state waste on

the environment.

II. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE

A. Materials

The materials used for the production of the aluminium-

glass composite material included scrap aluminium alloys

(Electricity wires damaged, household utensils and Beverage

cans) as matrix materials, While broken bottles as

reinforcement materials. The aluminum scrap which cuts to

pieces was preheated in the furnace to a temperature of 300 o

C

to dry off any oily dirt coatings that may be present on the

surface of the products, The pieces of aluminium scrap was

heated to 720 oC then slowly cool in furnace , in order to get

the ingot alloy. The chemical composition of aluminium alloy

is shown in table (1). The broken bottles were crushed and

pulverized. The pulverized powder was sieved with 90 µm

sieve aperture. The -90 µm (passing) particles size was used

for the research work. Table (2) shows the chemical

composition of bottles broken.

TABLE I

COMPOSITION OF ALUMINIUM SCRAP BY WEIGHT PERCENTAGE.

TABLE II

COMPOSITION OF BROKEN BOTTLE BY WEIGHT PERCENTAGE.

B. Composite preparation

The ingot alloy (matrix) is shown in table (1) was melted at

720 o

C in an electric furnace. The powder glass reinforcement)

was preheated to a temperature of about 150 oC to set it free

from physical moisture and then the reinforcement particles

were added according to the required quantity. After that, the

molten was stirred by 300 rpm speed for four minutes by using

vortex (stir) technique to ensure optimal distribution of glass

particles. A small amount of Mg was added to ensure good

wettability of particles with molten metal. Then melt was

poured into a preheated metal molds.

Aluminium alloy composites containing various glasses

contents, namely 5, 10,15 and 20% by weight were fabricate

and tested, and their properties were compared with those of

unreinforced matrix.

C. Testing

All tested were conducted in accordance with ASTM

standards. Tensile tests were performed at room temperature

using machine in accordance with ASTM E8-95 standards

and ductility (in terms of percentage elongation) was

measured. The tensile specimens of diameter 12.5 mm and

gauge length 62.5 mm were machined from the composite

with gauge length of specimen parallel to longitudinal axis of

the casting. The compression tests were conducted as per

ASTM- E9-95 standards. The specimens were used of

diameter 15 mm and length 20 mm machined from cast

composites. Charpy impact tests were conducted on notched

specimens according to ASTM E32-20 standard. The

dimensions of the specimens machined for the impact

tests were 55×10×10 mm with notch depth of 2 mm and

notch tip radius of 0.25 mm at 45o angle.

Samples for the microscopic examination were prepared by

standard metallographic procedures etched with killer' s agent

and examined under optical microscope.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. Microstructure analysis

The optical photomicrographs of the fabricated AMCs are

shown in Fig.1. It is observed from the figure that glass

particulate are dispersed uniformly in the aluminum matrix at

all weight percentage. The size of the glass particles appears to

be uniform throughout the aluminum matrix. This can be

attributed to the effective stirring action and the use of

appropriate process parameters. Homogeneous distribution of

particles is to enhance the mechanical properties of the matrix

alloy.

(a) (b)

(c) (d) Fig.1 Optical micrographs at X100. (a) Al Alloy with 5%

glass. (b) Al Alloy with 10 % glass. (c) Al Alloy with 15

% glass. (d) Al Alloy with 20 % glass.

B. Ultimate tensile strength

Fig. 2 shows the relation between weight percentage of

glass particulates and tensile strength of fabricated

composites. It is observed that the Al alloy has tensile strength

of 83.2 MPa. Tensile strength increases about 35% by adding

the reinforcement particles from 0 to 20 weight percentage.

Al Cr Mg Mn Cu Fe Si

balance

0.008

1.120

0.283

0.075

0.319

0.140

MgO CaO Na2O SiO2

5

9

15

71

3rd International Conference on Mechanical, Automobile and Robotics Engineering (ICMAR'2014) Feb. 11-12, 2014 Singapore

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The increase in tensile strength is attributed to increase in

grain boundary area due to grain refinement, at the interface

and effective transfer of applied tensile load to the uniformly

distributed well bonded reinforcement. Dispersion of hard

ceramic particles in soft ductile matrix results in improvement

in strength. This may be attributed to large residual stress

developed during solidification and due to mismatch of

thermal expansion between ceramic particles and soft

aluminium matrix. This resulting in misfit strain due to the

differential thermal contraction at the interface between the

matrix and the reinforcements. The misfit strain and resultant

misfit stress, generates dislocations. This increased dislocation

density, generated to accommodate the misfit strain provides a

significant contribution to strengthening of metal matrix The

increase in UTS may be due to the glass particle acting as

barriers to dislocation in the microstructure. This dislocation

increases the dislocation density, which provides appositive

contribution to strength of Al matrix composite. There is

decrease in the inter particle distance between the

reinforcement particles, which causes increased resistance to

dislocation motion as the particulate content is increased.

During the deformation either the matrix material has to push

the hard particulate further or it has to bypass the particles for

deformation, during the process the dislocation piles up

[10,11].

Fig. 2 Effect of glass on ultimate tensile strength of Al alloy.

C. Ultimate compressive strength

The Fig. (3) explains the effect of particulate reinforcement

on ultimate compressive strength. The increase in ultimate

compressive strength was about 25% as glass particulate was

increased from 0 to 20 wt.%, Whereas the Al matrix alloy was

owned ultimate compressive strength of 103.7 MPa. The

increase in compressive strength is due to the increase in the

density of the composite material. It is shown that addition of

ceramic reinforcement to a soft matrix increases its density

and there by its compressive strength. Similar observations

were reported in the work [10].

Fig. 2 Effect of glass on ultimate compressive strength of

Al alloy.

D. Percentage Elongation

From fig.(4) Percentage elongation was found to decrease

with increase in glass particles addition. This could be

attributed to the improved internal stress, due to the particulate

reinforcement, having adverse effect on the ductility of the

specimen. Increase in the composition of glass particles in

aluminum matrix from 0 to 5, 10, 15 and 20 wt.% caused the

percentage elongation at fracture of specimen to decrease from

11.5 to 10.7, 9.3, 8.6, and 8.2 respectively.

Fig. 4 Effect of glass on percentage elongation of Al alloy.

E. Impact Energy

0.00 4.00 8.00 12.00 16.00 20.00Weight percentage of glass

60.00

80.00

100.00

120.00

Ulti

mat

e te

nsile

stre

ngth

(MP

a)

0.00 4.00 8.00 12.00 16.00 20.00Weight percentage of glass

80.00

100.00

120.00

140.00

Ulti

mat

e co

mpr

essi

ve s

treng

th (M

Pa)

0.00 4.00 8.00 12.00 16.00 20.00Weight Percentage of glass

6.00

8.00

10.00

12.00

Per

cent

age

elon

gatio

n

3rd International Conference on Mechanical, Automobile and Robotics Engineering (ICMAR'2014) Feb. 11-12, 2014 Singapore

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Fig. (5) shows the variation of the Impact Energy of

unreinforced and reinforced specimens. Impact Energy

decreased from 25.7, 23.5, 22.9, 20.2 and 18.6 joules with

increasing the weight percentage of glass from 0 to 5, 10, 15

and 20 wt.% respectively. The brittle nature of the reinforcing

materials (glass) plays a significant role in degrading the

impact energy of the composite, since the unreinforced alloy

have the highest impact energy, indicating that it is the

toughest of them all.

Fig. 5 Effect of glass on impact energy of Al alloy.

IV. CONCLUSION

The conclusions derived from this study are as follows:

1) Using stir casting method , wasted glasses can be

successfully introduced in Aluminium scrap matrix to

fabricate economic composite material.

2) The tensile strength of composites found increased with

increased glass content.

3) The compression strength of composite found increasing

with increased reinforcements in the composites.

4) The percentage elongation of the composite decreased with

increase in weight percentage of glass.

4) The impact energy of the composite decreased with

increase in weight percentage of glass.

5) The microstructural studies revealed the uniform

distribution of the particles in the matrix system.

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[3] The Aluminum Association September, “Aluminum: The Element of Sustainability,ANorth American Aluminum Industry Sustainability

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[4] A. I. Paul, G.B. Nyior, O.O. Alabi, E.E. Anbua, J. Ogbodo & S. Segun,

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0.00 4.00 8.00 12.00 16.00 20.00Weight Percentage of glass

12.00

16.00

20.00

24.00

28.00

Impa

ct e

nerg

y (J

oule

s)

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