Institute of Fundamental Technological Research

In this paper we present the results of experimental measurements and numerical modeling of the effect of particle size on the residual thermal stresses arising in sintered metal–matrix composites after cooling down from the fabrication temperature. On example of novel Cr(Re)/Al2O3 composites processed by (i) spark plasma sintering and (ii) hot pressing the residual thermal stresses are measured by neutron diffraction technique and determined by a FEM model based on micro-CT scans of the material microstructure. Then numerical model of microcracking induced by residual stresses is applied to predict the effective Young modulus of the damaged composite. Comparison of the numerical results with the measured data of the residual stresses and Young’s modulus is presented and fairly good agreement is noted.

Metal–matrix composites (MMC), Residual/internal stress, Finite element analysis (FEA), Sintering

It is commonly known that the available non-destructive and mechanical methods of the Young modulus measurement yield different results. This paper presents comparison of the results of experimental determination and numerical modeling of the Young modulus of Cr–Al2O3–Re composites (MMC) processed by a powder metallurgical method (SPS). In the computational model a finite element analysis is combined with images of the real material microstructure obtained from micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). Experimental measurements were carried out by four testing methods: three-point bending, resonance frequency damping analysis (RFDA), ultrasonic pulse-echo technique, and scanning acoustic microscopy. The paper also addresses the issue which of the four experimental methods at hand gives results closest to the theoretical predictions of the micro-CT based FEM model.

Finite element analysis (FEA), Micro-CT based FE model, Metal matrix composites, Elastic modulus, Mechanical and nondestructive techniques