High volume fraction particulate and interpenetrating phase composites (IPC)

The role of reinforcing phase contiguity in high volume fraction particulate composites is investigated using model composites of pure aluminium reinforced with α-Al2O3 particles. To produce the composites, alumina particle (5µm) preforms were either loosely packed or, alternatively, packed and CIPed; these were then sintered, varying the sintering time and temperature, and infiltrated with pure liquid aluminium using gas pressure infiltration. The microstructure of the resulting composites was characterized using image analysis in terms of reinforcement phase contiguity (β), defined as the ratio of particle surface that is in contact with other particles to that in contact with the matrix. The influence of this parameter on several characteristics of the composites and the preforms they were made from was then studied, using theoretical models in the literature to isolate the influence of this parameter from that of other variables, such as the volume fraction ceramic. To this end, the thermal conductivity of the sintered preforms, basic composite mechanical properties (hardness, tensile strength, and damage evolution during straining) and the thermal expansion of the composites were characterized and compared with theory; furthermore, quenching and neutron diffraction were used to probe in more depth the thermal expansion behaviour of the composites. The results show that the thermal conductivity of the preform increases, as expected, upon increasing the relative density (volume fraction) and the contiguity of alumina particle after sintering. Comparison of data with theory shows that, while experimental values for the CIPed samples agree with the prediction by Argento and Bouvard for the thermal conductivity of powder preforms as a function of densification, neither this model, nor that of Montes et al. , fits all experimental values. Rather, when pooled the data show that the thermal conductivity of powder preforms, normalized for relative density using the differential effective medium model, obeys relatively well a simple linear relation between contiguity and conductivity. The hardness of the composite increases with increasing relative density and increasing contiguity. Here again, after normalization for the dependence of hardness on ceramic volume fraction using current theory, a nearly linear relation is found between hardness and contiguity. Tensile testing results show that the strength of the composite increases with increasing fraction ceramic and increasing contiguity while the elongation decreases, composites with an interconnected ceramic phase rapidly becoming quite brittle, with elongations falling below half a percent. No clear relationship is found between contiguity and Young's modulus after normalization for the volume fraction ceramic. Measurements of internal damage evolution show that damage increases very rapidly with deformation in the present interconnected composites, in agreement with their brittle character. The t