A Naderzadeh
A Akbari

Recovery of aluminum from machining chips using conventional remelting processes is very low due to thehigh surface oxidation of chips and also difficulties in remelting practices. The aim of this work was to investigatepossibility of recovery of aluminum machining chips into the form of aluminum based composite material with Al20 3particles as reinforcement. The applied experimental procedures involves cold pressing of chips inside an especiallydesigned steel mould followed by subsequent repeated thermo-mechanical stages in none protected ambient, includingheating up to I 050°C and impact loadings. The resulted microstructure contains nearly homogenously distributed Ah03particles originated from the oxide layer on the surface of the chips. Due to growth of surface oxide layer of chipsduring thermo-mechanical treatments, sufficient amount of dispersed oxide particles were available to produce suitablecomposite microstructure.Vickers hardness measurements indicated that optimized structure had hardness values of greater than 550 VHN whichis comparable with Al/AI20 3 composite materials produced by conventional methods.

Aluminum chips; Al/Al20 3 composite; Hardness