Liquid phase sintering in microgravity
Abstract
Liquid Phase Sintering (LPS) experiments have been conducted on four suborbital rockets, six Space Shuttle missions and two missions to the Mir Space Station by our research group. These missions began in 1989, spanning over 10 years. This paper will overview the many separate and interesting research and technical challenges faced in these missions and review the many published models developed to date by our group. The principle finding is that microgravity materials made using typical liquid phase sintering approaches are inferior to those made on earth. This results from pressing the green, presintered compact from their constituent powders, Fe and Co base materials with a Cu additive phase, producing composites that have solid volume fractions of 70-80%, with the balance either vacuum filled pores or entrapped gas. During LPS, the compact is processed above the melting point of the additive phase, producing a three-phase system. On earth, the entrapped gas is rapidly eliminated, and particle rearrangement is principally by buoyancy driven convection. In microgravity, this is not the case. In microgravity systems, all three phases exist concurrently, and the gas phase is not eliminated by buoyancy driven convection. Instead, the gas phase alters the free energy of the composite producing a variety of transport processes not typically seen in the earth based experiments, a positive result. Microgravity experiments slow down the typically fast acting rearrangement phase, permitting detailed study of the rapid processes taking place on earth in the first few seconds to minutes of LPS. Results from space processing have lead to a reconsideration of unit gravity models during the rearrangement stage. It has lead to a new model to explain the initiation of pore metamorphosis in LPS sample processed in microgravity, where pore breakup, coalescence and filling were found. Diffusion controlled grain growth in mutually soluble alloy phase systems, such as Co-Cu, was observed for the first time and a shrinking core model developed that successfully modeled this aspect of grain growth. In the absence of gravity, the grain coarsening model should follow the Lifshitz-Slyozov and Wagner (LSW) theory. Our extensive analysis of over 200 samples has shown that, contrary to expectation, there was an enhancement in particle coarsening with a decrease in the volume fraction of solid. The agglomerated microstructures exhibited a higher grain growth constant consistent with their higher 3D coordination number. Though buoyancy driven convection is eliminated, Brownian motion is not and becomes dominate in microgravity. This driving force leads to agglomeration and the need to use the Lifshitz-Slyozov Encounter Modified (LSEM) model to correctly model the results. Many papers on these phenomena h ve appeared in the literature and will be summarized anda presented along with a discussion of systems and subsystems needed to successfully conduct high temperature microgravity research on the fundamental mechanisms associated with LPS.
- Publication:
-
34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2002
- Bibcode:
- 2002cosp...34E2971S