Effects of volume fraction of SiC particles on mechanical properties of SiC/Al composites

SiC particle reinforced pure aluminum composites were fabricated using a powder metallurgy method. The effect of the volume fraction of the SiC particles on the mechanical properties of the composites was studied by both model simulation and experiment. The results indicate that the yield strength and tensile strength increase, but the elongation decreases with the increase in the volume fraction of the SiC particles. Both the modified shear lag model and the multi-scale model predicted yield strength and normalized elongation show similar evolution trends with the experimental data. However, the modified shear lag model underestimates the yield strength due to the ignorance of the strengthening mechanisms caused by grain refinement and dislocations interaction by the introduction of the SiC particles, and the multi-scale model overestimates the normalized elongation due to the ignorance of the pores distributed in the matrix.