Abstract
A319 aluminum alloy containing 6.5% Si and 3.5% Cu as major alloying elements has been widely used in machinery parts because of its excellent castability and crack resistance. However it needs more wear resistance to extend its usage to the severe wear environments. It has been known that hyper-eutectic Al-Si alloy having more than 12.6% Si contains pro-eutectic Si particles, which give better wear resistance and lubrication characteristics than hypo-eutectic Al-Si alloy like A319 alloy. In this study, it was tried to clad hyper-eutectic Al-Si alloy on the surface of A319 alloy. In the experiments, Al-36%Si alloy powder was mixed with organic binder to make a fluidic paste. The paste was screen-printed on the A319 alloy surface, melted by pulsed Nd:YAG laser and alloyed with the A319 base alloy. As experimental parameters, the average laser power was changed to 111 W, 202 W and 280 W. With increasing the average laser power, the melting depth was changed to $142{\mu}m$, $205{\mu}m$ and $245{\mu}m$, and the dilution rate to 67.2 %, 72.4 % and 75.7 %, and the Si content in the cladding layer to 16.2 %, 14.6 % and 13.7 %, respectively. The cross-section of the cladding layer showed very fine eutectic microstructure even though it was hyper-eutectic Al-Si alloy. This seems to be due to the rapid solidification of the melted spot by single laser pulse. The average hardness for the three cladding layers was HV175, which was much higher than HV96 of A319 base alloy. From the block-on-roll wear tests, A319 alloy had a wear loss of 5.8 mg, but the three cladding layers had an average wear loss of 3.5 mg, which meant that an increase of 40 % in wear resistance was obtained by laser cladding.