Effects of Cow Horn Particulates as Addictive on Microstructure, Tensile and Compressive Properties of Recycled Aluminium Alloy

In the recent time, the development of low cost metal alloys reinforced with waste materials such as agricultural waste and industrial waste has been one of the major innovations in the area of material science. Aluminium scraps were used as raw material and reinforced with locally available inexpensive cow horn particulate (CHp) of 3, 6, 9 and 12% by weight to develop a new material in the present study. The microstructure view was studied using optical microscope for analysing the distribution of CHp. The tensile and compressive strengths were studied for the reinforced CHp aluminium alloy. The results revealed that the tensile and compressive strengths values increase as the CHp increases and falls when the weight proportion reaches 12% due to poor wettability. Increment of 10.1%, 19.2%, 29.4% and 8.7% in tensile strength and 13.3%, 31.2%, 43.2% and 12.7% in the compressive strength were recorded for addition of 3%, 6%, 9% and 12% CHp reinforcement, respectively. The microstructure examination shows that the control sample contained fine, packed and shining grained structure while the CHp reinforced aluminium alloy contained less packed, dull with some inclusion grained structure. The inclusion and dull surface of the grains was observed increases as the percentages of the cow horn particles added increased. The spectrographic analysis conducted to determine the chemical compositions of all the specimens, showed various elements present in control sample and CHp reinforced aluminium alloy. Aluminium is in the range 91.3-93.0%, followed by silicon with 4.36-5.01%, other elements present include iron, copper, magnesium, manganese, chromium, nickel, zinc, titanium, lead, and others.