Towards High Mechanical Properties and Wear Resistance for Cutting Tool made from Alumina/MWCNTs Composite

The ordinary cutting tools used in the traditional turning machines have low wear resistance during the cutting process, especially in their tips, and therefore low or medium life of tools results in a high cost in replacing and consumptions of time. The present work provides a new and good suggestion with a high quality of the tooltip material made from a composite material consisting of alumina as a matrix and different amounts by weight of MWCNTs with 0.5 %, 1.0%, 1.5 %, 2.0 %, and 2.5 % as filler. The experimental investigations were carried out in the current work to study and assess the performance of new material of different compositions in comparison with ordinary tools. The experimental part included several stages; from preparing the nanocomposite powder, sampling, characterization (the structural and morphology properties by XRD and SEM), and compression test to investigate the mechanical properties of all new composites. The XRD manifested the principal peak of the plane (440) due to alumina and the peaks of planes (101) and (110) belong to MWCNT. The XRD confirmed the nanostructure of the composite. Moreover, FESEM evidenced the regular texture morphology that elucidated the localized filler over the matrix. The compression test provided lower modulus of elasticity values with a higher addition of nanocarbon, and then a higher wear resistance is gained. The numerical part was investigated by simulation of a cutting tool using ANSYS PROGRAM v.11 which based on the finite element method. The numerical results depend mainly on the mechanical properties of the experimental part. A significant reduction in the wear reached to 9.24%, 20.75%, 39.2%, and 71.50% for 1%, 1.5%, 2.0%, and 2.5% after the addition of nanocarbon, respectively for 1 mm cutting tool feeding, as a result of maximizing the elastic deformation in the expense of lowering plastic (wear) deformation.