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Sintering of Ceramic Particulate Composites: Effect of Matrix Density
Author(s) -
Rahaman Mohamed N.,
Jonghe Lutgard C.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
journal of the american ceramic society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 196
eISSN - 1551-2916
pISSN - 0002-7820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1151-2916.1991.tb06903.x
Subject(s) - materials science , isothermal process , composite material , sintering , silicon carbide , crystallite , ceramic , composite number , matrix (chemical analysis) , ceramic matrix composite , metallurgy , thermodynamics , physics
Composites consisting of a fine‐grained, polycrystalline zinc oxide matrix and <10 vol% coarse, rigid silicon carbide inclusions were prepared by the same mixing procedure and then compacted to produce samples with matrix densities of 0.45 and 0.68 of the theoretical. The samples were sintered under identical temperature profiles in separate experiments that employed either a constant rate of heating of 4°C/min or near isothermal heating at 735°C. The ratio of the densification rate of the composite matrix to the densification rate of the unreinforced zinc oxide was found to be independent of the initial matrix density. This ratio increased significantly with temperature in the constant‐heating‐rate experiments but was relatively constant in the isothermal experiments. The results indicate that microstructural coarsening may be an important mechanism for explaining the reduced sinterability of polycrystalline matrix composites.