Speaker
Description
Aluminium machining swarfs constitute an economic ordeal for manufacturing companies. High volumes of swarfs are generated daily through machining and the companies need to pay for the removal and transport of this by-product. The swarfs are compacted in briquettes to reduce their volume and partially disposed of through large foundries or landfilled.
The main issues reported in literature related to the recycling of swarfs are; the contamination with lubricant and the presence of oxides on the large surface area. These have been tackled in two ways, through liquid and solid processing, however, no effective method has been accomplished for full recycling of this material.
This paper investigates a 2-step method to upcycle aluminium machining swarf into high-value materials.
Compacted aluminium swarf briquettes were heat-treated between 650 and 850℃ for 1, to 16-hour and then cooled to ambient conditions at 2.3℃/min, 3.5℃/min and 5℃/min. Heat-treated material was then analysed using SEM-EDS to observe the oxide behaviour (thickness, continuity) and distribution throughout the briquette. The briquettes heat-treated at 1h for 850℃ with quenching at 5℃/min displayed thin, discontinuous oxide layers within the aluminium matrix. This heat treatment process shows the best condition while limiting the use of energy resources.
This material was then subjected to severe plastic deformation using an ECAP rectangular shape die at 90 and 45 degrees with a torsion effect. This process resulted in a change of geometry of the oxide layers present in the heat-treated briquettes, more oxides have dissolute at this heat treatment conditions as such the matrix is more flexible to obey the solid-state working process. The advanced aluminium 6082-alumina composite shows a boost of mechanical and physical properties compared with the aluminium 6082 alloy, in particular, anisotropic effects can be obtained to optimise the designs of the potential final components.
| Speaker Country | United Kingdom |
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