Abstract
Friction stir additive manufacturing was employed to fabricate a SiC-reinforced AA6061 composite. The tool with a pin length of 4.5 mm (plunge depth of 50% into the lower layer thickness) was used for the experiment. The stir zone consisted of fine, equiaxed grains due to dynamic recrystallisation. Variations in grain size, as well as changes in precipitate distribution, size, and morphology, were detected along the build direction. Hardness and tensile strength varied across layers, with the top slice having the greatest values of 104.2 HV and 268.4 MPa, respectively. Notably, the FSAM build demonstrated improved ductility with a maximum of 58.98%, mostly ascribed to fragmentation and partial loss of grain-boundary phases, as well as strong interfaces that delayed necking.
Acknowledgements
The first author wishes to thank the Ministry of Human Resource Development of India for giving funding in the form of a fellowship. The authors would also like to thank the MSE department at IIT Kanpur for their cooperation and smooth testing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Authors’ contribution
Smrity Choudhury: conceptualisation, writing – original draft, and investigation. Rahul Das: formal analysis and methodology. Durjyodhan Sethi: resources and visualisation. Joydeep Roy: review and editing. Barnik Saha Roy: final review and editing.
Data availability statement
The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of the study are available within the article.