Tribological and Microstructure Examination of Environmental Waste (Marble Dust) Filled Silicon Bronze Alloy for Wear Resistant Applications

In the present work, marble dust particulate filled silicon bronze (SiBr) alloy composites were fabricated in five different weight percentages (0 wt.%, 2.5 wt.%, 5 wt.%, 7.5 wt.% and 10 wt.% of MD). The main focus of this work was to study their physical and dry sliding wear behavior for rolling elements. The void contents of the particulate filled alloy composites decreased with the increase in marble dust content in the composites up to 7.5 wt.% of marble dust (MD). Similarly, the hardness of the filled composites showed an increasing trend with the increase in hard marble dust content in the alloy composites i.e. 119.25 Hv to 181.5 Hv for 0 wt.% to 7.5 wt.% addition of MD particulates. However, both the void content and hardness showed inferior properties in higher weight percentages of marble dust content. The Taguchi design of experimental (L 25 orthogonal array) technique was implemented to find out the dry specific wear rate of the unfilled and marble dust filled SiBr alloy composites. A scanning electron microscopy (SEM) study was performed to study the wear mechanism of the worn composites along with atomic force microscopic (AFM) analysis to predict the surface profile of the worn particulate filled alloy composites.