Prediction of Tribological Properties of Al MMCs using ANN Models

The superior properties of composite materials over conventional materials have been well acknowledged by the research community. In particular, Aluminum Metal Matrix Composites (Al-MMCs) are sought over other conventional engineering materials owing to their excellent mechanical properties and outstanding wear resistance. Al-MMCs are widely used in aerospace, marine and automotive industries for different applications. Wear is a complex phenomenon and the most important reason for the damage and consequent failure of machine parts. A lot of experiments have to be conducted in order to study the wear behavior resulting in wastage of both manpower and money. In several Artificial Intelligence (AI), an Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) help in reducing the cost of experiments when implemented with care and enough data in prediction of wear. Al-MMCs subjected to wear studies and with the obtained data, an ANN model was developed to predict the tribological properties of the Al6061 and Al7075 reinforced with SiC and Al2O3 MMCs. The predicted values of tribological properties of MMCs using a well trained ANN were found in good agreement with experimental values.