Siliconizing of Aluminium Alloys via Silica Sand Bath

Aluminium alloy is a material that commonly used in many industries such as automobile and aerospace because of their excellent properties.However their hardness and wear resistance are poor in comparison to steel resistance.This report emphasizes an experiment concerning case hardening process of Aluminium alloy substrate via Silica Sand Bath which is known as Siliconizing. The silica sand was put into the pocket of a ceramic which is brick clay then it was placed into a furnace. The working temperature is 580°C with 1 hour of soaking time.After the siliconizing process is done, the surface of the substrate were evaluated using hardness machine in order to analyze the difference in hardness before and after siliconizing. Based on the results obtained, it was found that the siliconizing process could not be performed on the surface of Aluminium alloy substrate. Hence, mechanical properties evaluation were unable to be performed from the surface of the siliconized sample using Scanning Electron Microscope or optical microscope.As a conclusion, the Aluminium alloy substrate is not a suitable material to be siliconized via silica sand bath.