Journal of Materials Processing Technology 211 (2011) 15401546

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Journal of Materials Processing Technology

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Aluminum alloy pistons reinforced with SiC fabricated by centrifugal casting

Xiaoyu Huang , Changming Liu, Xunjia Lv, Guanghui Liu, Fuqiang Li
College of Material Science and Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Hypereutectic AlSi alloy-based composite pistons reinforced with SiC particles locally at the head were
Received 22 December 2010 fabricated by centrifugal casting. The effects of various technique parameters, i.e., the slurry temperature
Received in revised form 9 April 2011 of the alloy, the mold temperature and the rotation speed of the mold, on the particle segregation were
Accepted 12 April 2011
investigated, and the macromorphologies and microstructures of pistons were observed. The mechanical
Available online 20 April 2011
properties, such as hardness and wear resistance along the axis of the piston and the thermal expansion
coefcient at the piston head, were measured. The results showed that, (1) centrifugal casting can be
Keywords:
used as a new and effective method in manufacturing pistons, and reasonable parameters were 850 C,
Metal matrix composites
Hypereutectic AlSi alloy
600 C and 800 rpm for the slurry temperature of the alloy, the mold temperature and the rotation speed
Pistons of the mold, respectively; (2) the hardness values of pistons fabricated by centrifugal casting gradually
Centrifugal casting increased from the piston skirt to the piston head, and the average hardness value in piston heads was
improved by 23.7HRB over that of pistons fabricated by gravity permanent mold casting; (3) the piston
heads showed excellent wear resistance, and the wear rate of piston heads decreased by 70.3% over that of
the piston fabricated by gravity permanent mold casting; and (4) the average linear expansion coefcient
of the piston head was 15.3 106 K1 and decreased by 23.1% over that of pistons fabricated by gravity
permanent mold casting.
2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The conventional fabrication method for pistons is that of grav-
ity permanent mold casting, however, novel fabrication methods
have emerged in recent years. A new common fabrication route for
the fabrication of pistons is squeeze casting, which was invented
by Japanese researchers in 1980s, and used to reinforce the head of
a piston. Currently, Urquhart (1991) and Vijayaram et al. (2006)
reported that these pistons are manufactured in Japan, Europe
and USA. Ghomashchi and Vikhrov (2000) discussed the princi-
ples of this process, and Vijayaram et al. (2006) produced metal
matrix composite pistons reinforced with ceramic bers using this
method. Park et al. (2001) developed a high-strength Al-alloy pis-
ton using a similar method to the powder forging process, and
the piston showed excellent mechanical properties. Kurita and
Hiroshi (2008) provided a new approach in manufacturing pistons
by forging pistons with an aluminum alloy, a magnesium alloy, or
a titanium alloy, and similarly, the Monotherm piston produced by
the MAHLE Group is forged with a single piece of material.
Using welding technology, Bullat (1987) xed a piston head
reinforced with SiC bers onto an Al-based piston skirt, inventing
a new type of combined piston. In recent years, these combined
pistons, such as the so-called crown with steel, skirt with Al alloy
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 23 65103736; fax: +86 23 65103736.
E-mail address: huangxiaoyu311@163.com (X. Huang).
pistons, in which the crowns are composed of steel and the skirts
are composed of Al alloys, have shown a wide range of applications
in the engines of heavy-duty trucks and commercial vehicles. Other
researchers including Wang and Tung (1999), Wang et al. (2005),
Taymaz et al. (2005) and Xu et al. (2006) claimed that the corro-
sion and wear resistance of the pistons, in which the surface was
coated with certain ceramic materials, could be improved to some
extent. Furthermore, other new fabrication routes of pistons have
been developed. For example, Liu et al. (2010) invented a fabrication
route to make partially particle-reinforced pistons by centrifugal
casting.
Among the abovementioned fabrication routes, Chirita et al.
(2008) claimed that centrifugal casting has the advantages of
easy operation, low cost and good exibility for the fabrication
of cylindrical pistons. And it can meet the requirements for vari-
ous mechanical performances at specic locations in a component.
The other abovementioned methods have the limitations of com-
plex processes and the high cost of manufacturing, which no doubt
decreases the advantages of those methods in the competitive mar-
ket. In short, centrifugal casting is a promising fabrication route for
the formation of pistons.
A slurry of an Al alloy matrix composite reinforced with
SiC particles was prepared by stir casting. The slurry was then
poured into a rotating mold, and due to the density difference
between the SiC particles (SiC = 3170 kg/m3 ) and the molten metal
(m = 24002700 kg/m3 ), the SiC particles would accumulate at the
piston head under a centrifugal force as revealed by the principles

0924-0136/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2011.04.006
 X. Huang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 211 (2011) 15401546 1541

Table 1
Processing parameters of piston fabrication.

Processing Slurry Mold Rotation rate of

temperature temperature the mold (rpm)
( C) ( C)

Processing (1) 850 600 800

Processing (2) 850 500 800
Processing (3) 800 600 800
Processing (4) 800 500 800

gation, as shown in Fig. 2, while the other two small ones were not
used in this research.)

2.3. Experimental procedures

2.3.1. Fabrication of composite pistons

Fig. 1. Schematic of the vertical centrifugal casting machine.
discussed in the work of Watanabe et al. (1998) and Watanabe et al.
(2002), because the piston head is further away from the centrifu-
gal axis compared with the piston skirt. Finally, the Al alloy-based
composite pistons partially reinforced with SiC particles were fabri-
cated by centrifugal casting. The effects of the temperature on slurry
pouring and on the mold in the accumulation of SiC particles were
investigated. In addition, the macrostructures and microstructures
in different parts of the pistons were observed, and the hardness
and wear resistance at different locations in the pistons were tested.
The AlSi alloy was melted in a graphite crucible. The produc-
tion of the liquid composite was performed using the procedures
followed by Narciso et al. (1992) and Hashim et al. (1999, 2001a,
2001b). After rening and skimming of the melt, a stirrer was
introduced into the molten metal, which was then mechanically
agitated. Meanwhile, a pre-weighted quantity of pretreated SiC
particles was introduced into the slurry. Stirring did not stop until
the distribution of SiC particles became uniform. The homogeneous
slurry was then quickly poured into the rotating mold. Finally, Al
alloy-based composite pistons reinforced with SiC particles were
fabricated by centrifugal casting using processing conditions simi-
lar to those reported by Nai and Gupta (2002) and Balasivanandha
Prabu et al. (2006). The experimental conditions used during cen-
trifugal casting are shown in Table 1.

2. Experimental methods 2.3.2. Heat treatment

2.1. Materials
The matrix material of the composites used for experiments was
an AlSi18CuMgNi alloy, and the reinforcements were SiC particles
with nominal diameters of 15 and 30 m. The total SiC particles
accounted for 17.2 vol.% of the composite in this research. Of the
reinforcements, the proportion of the SiC particles with two differ-
ent sizes made up 50% each in mass fractions.
2.2. Equipment
The pistons were heated at 515 C (5 C) for 8 h in an electric
resistance furnace and then quenched with 80 C water for solution
treatment. The pistons were then heated to175 C (5 C) for 8 h for
aging treatment and were then cooled to 20 C.
2.3.3. Structural observations
The pistons were cut with Electron Discharge Machining (EDM)
along the axial direction to produce specimens. After grinding, pol-
ishing and etching, the macrostructures and microstructures on the
incision surface of the specimens were observed using an optical
microscope.

A vertical centrifugal casting machine and a metalic iron mold
consisting of two parts were used. Fig. 1 shows the schematic rep-
resentation of the experimental arrangement. The location of the
sand cores in the lower part of the mold is shown in Fig. 2. Four pis-
tons were fabricated each time. (Annotation: the large sand cores
and cavities were used for the formation of pistons in this investi-
2.3.4. Behavior tests
(1) Tests of hardness and wear resistance
Figs. 3 and 4 show, respectively, the locations for hardness and
wear resistance tests of the specimens. A model HR-150A Rockwell
hardness tester was used to measure the hardness distributions of
the specimens. The wear resistance tests were carried out on a self-
made wear test machine and performed on the incision surface with
a diamond grinding head. The diamond grinding head was 8 mm
in diameter, with a load of 20 N, a rotating speed of 540 rpm, and
a wear period of 10 min using dry friction conditions. An optical

Fig. 2. Lower iron mold and cores. Fig. 3. Locations for hardness tests.
1542 X. Huang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 211 (2011) 15401546

Fig. 4. Locations for wear resistance tests.

scale with a 0.001-g accuracy was used to measure the mass of

specimens before and after frication. The amount of wear and tear
was used as the index of wear resistance. Fig. 6. The clean piston.

(2) Test of thermal expansion property

The samples used for thermal expansion tests were cut from
the SiC segregation zone of the piston head by EDM, and the size
of the sample was 4 mm in diameter and 25 mm in length. A
model NETZSCH-DIL402C thermal expansion testing machine was
used to measure the linear expansion coefcient of the samples.
The parameters for this measurement, i.e., the rate of tempera-
ture ascending and the maximum temperature, were 1 C/min and
200 C, respectively.

2.3.5. Structure observations and behavior tests of the Mahle

piston
For comparison analysis, a Mahle piston was fabricated by grav-
ity permanent mold casting with the composition of AlSi18CuMgNi
alloy. The structure of the piston was observed, and hardness and
wear resistance were tested (with the same testing and observation
conditions used previously).
3. Results
3.1. Macromorphology of the composite pistons
Fig. 5 shows as cast pistons directly taken from the mold. Only
the upper and lower pistons were used for material characteri-
zation. In Fig. 6 is shown the clean piston. The piston has clear
outlines and a smooth surface and was obtained with the required
dimensions.
The clean piston was machined to create a piston with grooves,
shown in Fig. 7. The piston with grooves was then cut along the
axis by EDM, and the cross-section morphology, as shown in Fig. 8,
revealed many SiC particles gathered in the piston head. In con-
trast, there are no SiC particles in the piston skirt. This observation
indicates that the SiC particle segregation was achieved under a
centrifugal force, and eventually Al alloy-based composite pistons
Fig. 7. Piston with grooves after machining.
with partial SiC particle segregation were manufactured by cen-
trifugal casting.
Fig. 9 shows the transverse cut of the samples, along the axes of
pistons obtained using the processing conditions shown in Table 1.
As can be seen, the pistons with processing (1), (2), (3) can be
divided into three zones from the piston skirt to the piston head, i.e.,
the defects gathering zone containing a large number of pores and
oxide inclusions, the metal matrix zone free from SiC particles and
impurities, and the SiC particle segregation zone. However, there
is no evidence of divided zones in pistons with processing (4). And
it is seen that as the temperatures of pouring slurry and preheated
mold decrease, the area of the segregation zone in the piston head
becomes gradually big.
3.2. Microstructures of pistons
(1) Microstructures of the composite pistons
Figs. 1012 show microstructures in different zones of pistons
of processing (1), (2) and (3), respectively. The microstructures of

Fig. 5. As-cast pistons fabricated by centrifugal casting. Fig. 8. Cross-section morphology of the piston.
 X. Huang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 211 (2011) 15401546 1543

Fig. 9. Macromorphology of samples with various processing parameters.

Fig. 10. Microstructures of different zones of the aging state piston with processing (1).

Fig. 11. Microstructures of different zones of the aging state piston with processing (2).

the defect gathering zones located at the end of the piston skirts of
processing (1), (2) and (3), are shown in Figs. 10(a), 11(a) and 12(a),
respectively. As can be seen, there are a large number of pores, small
size of irregularly shaped primary silicon particles and SiC particles.
The microstructures of the metal matrix zone located at
the piston skirt of processing (1), (2) and (3) are shown in
Figs. 10(b), 11(b) and 12(b), respectively. As shown in these g-
ures, the microstructure consists of -Al dendrite, eutectic Si and a
small amount of eutectic Mg2 Si as well as circular Al9 Fe2 Si2 broken
off in the -Al grain boundaries in this zone. As the slurry temper-
ature and mold temperature decrease, sizes of the eutectic Si and
primary -Al decrease.
The microstructures of the SiC segregation zone located at
the piston head of processing (1), (2) and (3) are shown in
Figs. 10(c), 11(c) and 12(c), respectively. These gures show that, in
this zone, the microstructure consists of SiC particles uniformly dis-
tributed in the matrix and some SiC particles embedded in primary
silicon. As the slurry pouring temperature and mold temperature
decrease, the volume fraction of SiC particles in SiC segregation
zones decreases, and some pores emerge as shown in Fig. 12(c).
The SiC particle volume fraction and primary silicon volume frac-
tion in piston heads with processing (1), (2), (3), are 33.2% and 6.9%,
27.2% and 7.7%, 20.2% and 9.2%, respectively.
Microstructures of different zones of the piston with processing
(4) are shown in Fig. 13. The microstructures are shown to consist
of SiC particles, primary silicon particles, and pores in both zones
of the piston. Because the temperatures of the slurry pouring and
the mold are low in this processing, the viscosity of the molten
metal becomes so great that the SiC particles, primary silicon par-
ticles, and pores cannot be effectively separated from each other.

Fig. 12. Microstructures of different zones of aging state pistons with processing (3).
1544 X. Huang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 211 (2011) 15401546

Fig. 13. Microstructures of the different zones of the aging state piston with processing (4): (a) the piston skirt; (b) the piston head.

Fig. 14. Microstructures of different zones of the aging state piston fabricated by gravity permanent mold casting: (a) the piston skirt; (b) the piston head.

The average SiC particle volume fraction and primary silicon vol-
ume fraction of the piston with this processing are 16.8% and 10.1%,
respectively.
(2) Microstructures of the Mahle piston
Microstructures of the different zones of the Mahle piston fab-
ricated by gravity permanent mold casting are shown in Fig. 14. It
shows that the microstructures in both zones consist of primary
silicon particles and eutectic structures. And there is almost no
difference in the microstructures between these two zones. The
primary silicon volume fractions of Mahle piston at the skirt and
the head are 15.2% and 17.6%, respectively.
3.3. Behaviors
3.3.1. Hardness
Distributions of the hardness of pistons obtained using different
processing conditions are illustrated in Fig. 15. This gure indicates
that the hardness values along the axes of the pistons gradually
increase from the skirt to the head. As the temperatures of the slurry
pouring and the mold increase, the greater the gradient hardness
values become. Also, the peak values of hardness occur at the SiC
segregation zone of piston heads. However, the hardness values
along the axes of the piston with processing (4) change slightly due
to the slight change in structures as shown in Fig. 13. The hardness
values in piston heads fabricated by centrifugal casting are greatly
higher than those of the Mahle piston. However, in piston skirts,
there is no evident differences in hardness values among the pistons
fabricated by the two methods.
3.3.2. Wear resistance
Fig. 16 illustrates the mass loss at different zones of pistons with
various fabrication routes after wear resistance tests. It shows that
the mass loss of the piston heads and piston ends is fairly low com-
pared with that of the piston skirts. The mass loss of the various
zones of the Mahle piston and the piston with processing (4) varies
little due to the same microstructures present in various zones.
The difference in the mass loss throughout the various zones
of pistons was related to their different microstructures. The head
zones and end zones of the pistons fabricated by centrifugal casting
show excellent dry tribological properties resulting from the intro-
duction of SiC and primary silicon particles, and the morphologies
of the dry abrasive worn surface are shown at A and C in Fig. 17,
respectively. This gure shows that the worn surface appears at
and smooth and that the wear scar is shallow. While in the skirt

Fig. 15. Distributions of hardness of aging state pistons. Fig. 16. Mass loss in various zones of aging state pistons.
 X. Huang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 211 (2011) 15401546
Fig. 17. Morphologies of dry abrasive worn surface.
zone of the piston, when the relative friction between the Al-based
alloy and the diamond grinding head occurred, the Al-based alloy
deformed, because only soft phases of -Al dendrite and eutec-
tic structures exist, and a large quantity of metal matrix alloy was
removed. The dry abrasive worn surface appears to have plow
marks, as shown at the location B in Fig. 17.
3.3.3. Thermal expansion property
The linear expansion coefcient was tested and the average lin-
ear expansion coefcient at the head zone with SiC particles was
15.3 106 K1 in the temperature range of 20200 C. This lin-
ear expansion coefcient markedly decreased by 23.1% compared
with that of 19.9 106 K1 in the temperature range of 20200 C
tested by Huang (1995) of the Mahle piston. SiC particles in the
piston head contributed to this decrease in the linear expansion
coefcient and improved the behavior of the thermal expansion of
the Al-based composite piston in the working condition.
4. Discussion
4.1. Segregation of particles
According to the studies by Watanabe et al. (1998), it indicates
that during the centrifugal casting, there are two types of forces on
each particle in the molten metal: the radial centrifugal force which
points to the mold wall, and the viscous drag force in the opposite
direction. The balance between these two forces can be expressed
as Eq. (1):
d2 x 4

Dp
3 dx
mp = |p m |  Gg 3Dp
d2 t 3 2 dt
where mp , dx2 /d2 t p , m , Dp , g,  and dx/dt are particle mass,
particle acceleration, particle density, density of matrix, particle
diameter, gravity and the viscosity of the molten metal, respec-
tively. G is the ratio of the centrifugal force to gravity, as given by
Eq. (2):
G = 2D0 N 2
where D0 is the diameter of the cast ring (in m) and N is the velocity
of mold rotation (in s1 ).
The rst term of Eq. (1) represents the buoyant force and the
second results from the viscous drag. The moving direction of the
particle is determined by the relative values of densities: if p > m ,
particles move away from the centrifugal center axis, and if p < m ,
particles move toward the centrifugal center axis. For the slurry of
the AlSiC composite, the densities of SiC and molten metal are
3170 kg/m3 and 24002700 kg/m3 , respectively. According to Eq.
(1), the SiC particles will move away from the centrifugal center
axis under a centrifugal force, and nally segregate in the piston
head to form the SiC segregation zone. In contrast, the pores and
primary silicon particles in which density is 2330 kg/m3 will move
toward the centrifugal center axis under a centrifugal force and
eventually gather at the end of the piston skirt to form the defects
1545
Fig. 18. Movements of particles and pores in the mold during centrifugal casting.
gathering zone. The molten alloy, in which the density value lies
between that of SiC and that of light impurities, will gather in the
middle of the piston to form the metal matrix zone. Fig. 18 illus-
trates the moving directions of the SiC particles, pores and primary
silicon particles under a centrifugal force.Furthermore, Watanabe
et al. (2002) reported that the motion of solid particles in viscous
liquid under centrifugal force can be determined by Stokes law.
The terminal velocity is reached at a very early stage of the centrifu-
gal casting method on basis of their own study in 1998. Therefore,
the radial velocity of particles under a centrifugal force dx/dt is
expressed as:
dx |p m |
= GgDP2 (3)
dt 18
It is found that, with the same slurry pouring temperature, the
mold temperature of processing (1) is higher than that of processing
(2), and the area of the SiC segregation zone of the former is smaller
than that of the latter. With the same mold temperature, the slurry
pouring temperature of processing (1) is higher than that of pro-
cessing (3), and the boundaries among different zones of the former
are much clearer than those of the latter. Referred to Eq. (3), it is
found that the velocity of particles moving in molten metal is pro-
portional to the difference in density between particle and molten
metal, but is inversely proportional to the viscosity of the molten
metal. Thus, with the temperatures of the slurry and the mold
increasing, the viscosity of the molten metal becomes lower, which
leads to the velocity of particles moving in molten metal getting
larger, and so a larger velocity value gives a steeper microstructure
or composition gradient, and vice versa. This characteristic indi-
(1) cates that, the higher the temperatures of slurry pouring and mold
get, the better the segregation of the particles becomes.
4.2. Distribution of primary silicon particles
From Eq. (1), it can be deduced that the primary silicon particles
would move toward the centrifuge center axis under a centrifu-
gal force due to its low density (2330 kg/m3 ), and thus only gather
(2)
at the end of the piston skirt zone. However, it was found that
some primary silicon particles go the opposite way and there exist
a certain number of primary silicon particles in the piston head
zones, as shown in Figs. 10(c), 11(c), and 12(c). The SiC particles
were assumed to crash onto or into the primary silicon particles
and they adhere to each other under a centrifugal force and thus
a compound body of the primary silicon and SiC particles comes
in to being. On the other hand, it is known that SiC particles act
as nucleation sites of primary silicon and this could be one of the
reasonable explanations for the presence of SiC particles embed-
ded in primary silicon particles forming a composite particle. So,
the compound body formed by the adherence and the compos-
ite particle formed by the nucleation will move, according to Eq.
(3), towards the area of the piston head or to the skirt area accord-
ing to its relative density (which in turn depends on the relative
amounts of silicon and silicon carbide present in the particle) com-
1546 X. Huang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 211 (2011) 15401546
Fig. 19. Combination of primary Si and SiC particles in piston heads.
pared to density of the liquid metal. Fig. 19 provides the evidence
of the compound body and the composite particle in the piston
heads.
5. Conclusions
(1) Aluminum alloy-based composite pistons partially reinforced
with SiC particles were successfully manufactured by centrifu-
gal casting. This type of pistons contain a large quantity of SiC
particles in the piston head, which can meet requirements such
as hardness, wear resistance and the thermal expansion behav-
ior of pistons.
(2) Three different zones from the piston skirt to the piston head
exist, i.e., defects gathering zone, metal matrix zone and SiC
segregation zone. As the temperatures of the slurry pouring and
the molds increase, the better the effects of the purication of
molten melt and the segregation of SiC particles become.
(3) The hardness values along the axis of the piston gradually
increase from the skirt to the head, which corresponds to the
structure changing along the axis of the pistons. The piston,
fabricated using a slurry temperature of 850 C, a mold tem-
perature of 600 C, and a rotation speed of 800 rpm, possesses
the highest average hardness value, i.e., 93.9 HRB. Compared
with the hardness values of the Mahle piston fabricated by
gravity permanent mold casting, those of composite pistons
made by centrifugal casting with prosessing (1), (2), (3) and (4)
are increased by 23.7 HRB, 20.3 HRB, 21.5 HRB and 13.0 HRB,
respectively.
(4) The mass loss of the head zones of composite pistons is less than
that of other zones. The piston made using a slurry temperature
of 850 C, a mold temperature of 600 C, and a rotation speed
of 800 rpm shows the best wear resistance behavior. Compared
with the mass loss of the Mahle piston, the mass loss of pistons
fabricated by centrifugal casting with processing (1), (2), (3) and
(4), decreased by 70.3%, 68.9%, 68.1% and 63.0%, respectively.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Doctor Wang Kai and Doctor
Lin Xuedong in Chongqing University for their assistance in the
experimental work.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2011.04.006.
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