High performance automotive and railway components made from novel competitive aluminium composites

The traditional materials encounter difficulties to comply with all the properties required by new components under service conditions. The automotive and the railway industries require low cost solutions to improve the final performance of components made from steel, cast iron, or even conventional aluminium alloys (e.g. clutch discs, brake discs, or pistons). Weight reduction, improvement in wear behaviour, high thermal conductivity, low coefficient of thermal expansion, and easy recycling are sought, among other characteristics, in order to obtain more efficient products leading to a reduction of pollutant emissions. The range of materials that can meet these requirements is presently very narrow and their final price is more expensive (e.g. aluminium matrix composites) than currently used materials. In this paper a new low cost metal matrix composite that has been used to produce pistons, clutch discs, and train brake discs is presented.