The present study involved development of copper-based metal matrix composite, reinforced with waste EN 31 steel chips and TiB2 ceramic particles. Waste EN 31 steel chips and TiB2 ceramic particles were ball-milled for 100 h to obtain a single entity. The composite material was produced with a stir-casting technique, followed by a squeeze pressure process. The addition of Cu + 10 wt% of waste steel chips + 5 wt% of TiB2 improved the tensile strength of the copper matrix by about 68.35%. Furthermore, the addition of Cu + 5 wt% of waste steel chips + 10 wt% of TiB2 and Cu + 12.5 wt% of waste steel chips + 2.5 wt% of TiB2 increased the hardness and toughness of the copper matrix by about 133.33% and 28.57%, respectively. The addition of Cu + 10 wt% waste steel chips + 5 wt% of TiB2 ensured minimal corrosion weight loss in the metal matrix composite as a result of low porosity and a strong bond between the molecules. Further, representative volume element (size: 225 × 225 × 225 nm)-based finite element analysis was done to explain the micro-mechanical deformation, interfacial strength of matrix-particle interaction and damage behavior of Cu + 10 wt% of waste steel chips + 5 wt% of TiB2 metal matrix composite. A user material sub-routine model was also written and implemented with the help of FORTRAN subroutines to simulate the macro-mechanical tension test process of Cu + 10 wt% waste steel chips + 5 wt%TiB2 metal matrix composite. The results revealed a good agreement between the micro-mechanical and macro-mechanical finite element analysis models on the one hand and the experimental results on the other. Further, the representative volume element (with matrix and particles) showed about 59% and 66.5% higher tensile strength compared to the matrix–particle interface and the matrix (without particles), respectively. The percentage difference between the micro-mechanical finite element analysis and the experiments as well as the macro-mechanical finite element analysis and the experiments was found to be 5.58% and 9.64%, respectively. The finite element analysis results established that the waste steel chip powder particles exhibited greater stress than the TiB2 powder particles.
Finite Element analysis on the stress behavior of Steel Spring and Metal Matrix composite based leaf spring
