Effect of microstructure on Young’s modulus of extruded Al–SiC composites studied by resonant ultrasound spectroscopy

In this work, an attempt was made to correlate the Young’s modulus of SiC particle reinforced aluminum alloy composites, measured by resonant ultrasound method, to reinforcement spatial distribution. Composites were fabricated by extrusion of billets that were previously formed using cold pressing blend of matrix alloy powders and ceramic particles. It has been shown that more aggregated microstructures were generated with an increase in ceramic volume fraction (to 20%) and the matrix alloy powder mean particle size from 40 to 180 μm as well as with a decrease in the reinforcement particle size (3–14 μm). At the same time, ultrasonic wave velocity as well as Young’s modulus diminish with a decrease in SiC content and its particle size, and with increase in matrix alloy particle size. The analysis showed that it could be partly attributed to the higher amount of residual porosity in agglomerated structures. An addition decrease of elastic characteristics was attributed to the increasing influence of mechanically imperfect contacts that formed between ceramic particles in the more aggregated microstructures.