Fabricação e caracterização de compósitos de alumínio reforçados com grafeno

Abstract

Additive manufacturing is a technique that has been widely used for the manufacture of aeronautical and space components, due to its ease in manufacturing parts with complex geometry with less waste of raw material. Parallel to this, the addition of graphene in metallic materials can improve their mechanical properties, improving them for various applications, such as in the aerospace sector. In this work, graphene-reinforced aluminum composites were manufactured and characterized in terms of their microstructure and mechanical properties through mechanical tests of microhardness and compression, in order to verify their viability for additive manufacturing, that is, to verify whether the material prima is capable of being used for creating desired structures. For the manufacture of composites, uniaxial pressing and preparation with binder were used, followed by the sintering process. For the porosity results, it was seen that the processes that used the aluminum slip have a higher porosity in relation to the samples produced by compaction. Another perception is that the reduction of liquids in the production of slips reduces porosity. Also, it was noticed that the influence of graphene in the samples resulted in an increase in the microhardness of the samples, but not significantly altering the compression results. It was noted that the graphene present in slips tended to reduce their apparent porosity. Finally, it was concluded that the method used to simulate additive manufacturing was satisfactory, proving to be capable of producing a sufficient raw material for the manufacture of parts, although it needs improvements in its composition.