Synergistic effect of Cu on laminated graphene nanosheets/AlCu composites with enhanced mechanical properties

Traditional laminated metal matrix composites are confined to two-component system of pure metal matrix and its reinforcement. To achieve further improvement of the applied mechanical properties , in this work, the soft phase of laminated composites was enhanced by alloying with Cu. The synergistic effect of Cu on phases of both soft and hard including in-situ catalyzing and precipitation hardening was firstly explored. The laminated graphene nanosheets (GNSs) /AlCu composites of 2 vol% GNSs, were fabricated by ball milling and hot-rolling processes with much higher mechanical properties. The multi-pass hot rolling provided the solution-precipitation process of Cu transforming into Al 2 Cu and significantly increased the dislocation density of the original soft Al matrix. In addition, the fracture mechanism and fracture model of the laminated GNSs/AlCu composites were also investigated.