Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2017
Aluminum-Graphite composites were prepared from pure aluminum and natural graphite the mixture was processed by the mechanical milling (MM) technique. The microstructural characteristics of prepared composites were investigated by X-rays diffraction (XRD), optical microscopy (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The mechanical response of samples was evaluated by compression and hardness tests. To obtain solid samples from milled powders we used an alternative sintering process based on induction heating. Although this method is frequently used for refractory ceramics fabrication (>1500°C), it has not been properly evaluated for materials processing at low temperature (<500°C). This work presents a comparative study of Al-Gr composites sintered by using two routes: conventional pressure-less and high frequency induction heating. After the inductive sintering, is noticeable a pronounced reduction of porosity and increase on the mechanical response of induction sintered specimens, compared with the processed by conventional route. Also, yield strength and hardness increases with graphite addition and induction sintering reaching an increase of 50 and 90%, respectively (compared with an Alp-2h blank).