摘要：Surface modification and coating techniques are widely used to improve
tribological properties of metallic materials for a wide range of
manufacturing, transportation, defense, and consumer industries. However, in
all these techniques a surface treatment is applied after the part has been
fabricated, and this adds significantly to the overall costs. An alternative,
costeffect method has been, proposed via functionalization of aluminum matrix
composites uniformly reinforced with hard particles. A larger volume fraction
of those particles can be attained near the wear surface via centrifugal
casting,. The volume fraction of the heavier borides is controlled by
inertial forces upon centrifugal processing the semisolid composite. In this
study, boride particles are modeled as spherical particles subject to a drag
force in a Stoke flow in the liquid aluminum matrix. This equation of motion
for the particles under the applied centrifugal forces is solved numerically
assuming a gaussian diameter size distribution with a spatial uniform random
distribution of particles in the sample. The effect of temperature on
the viscosity is also considered by solving the energy equation. From
parametric studies in the numerical model, it is possible to better
understand and control the experimental conditions to obtain an appropriate
functionally-graded aluminum matrix for high wear resistance applications.
