Introduction to Powder Metallurgy
Abhinav Garg
September 2015
1 powder metallurgy
1.1 uses of P/M
[Link] shape process - what product we get after P/M is final and there is no
need of [Link] there is no wastage of product (just there is shrinkage in
volume as the space between the powder gets reduced when pressurized ).
[Link] materials like ceremics(M.P.-3000◦ C) and tungsten which have very high
melting points ,so casting them is practically not feasible.
[Link] we want a mixture of diff. materials which have different properties
P/M is very [Link] example:-
–when you have copper-graphite lubricant to be prepared you can’t use cast-
ing due to high difference in M.P.
–copper-lead are both metals and have near M.P. but the problem is in liquid
phase they are immiscible with lead being heavy.
–rare earth magnets(made of Fe,neobium,Boron) are manufactured using
P/[Link] are very strong magnets.
–some materials which have say 20 diff. components (eg:- air plane brakes)
have to be prepared by P/M.
–cutting tools are mostly fabricated using P/M.
1.2 Steps in P/M
1.2.1 compression
powder have a property of being compressed as it have gaps in between it’s
[Link] we can apply pressure on the powder and compress it this leads to:-
[Link] bond formation between the particles of powder.
[Link] of volume.
product prepared after this is known as green compact/asspressed which is then
sintered.
1.2.2 Sintering
[Link] prepared green compact is treated with elevated temperatures.(Heat treat-
ment).
1
[Link] leads to the mechanical bond getting converted into chemical bonds.
[Link] tends to acquire a state s.t. total energy of the system is reduced.
[Link] leads to increase in mechanical properties of the structure.
Compression of molecules
THE SYSTEM TENDS TO ACQUIRE A STATE OF LOW ENERGY.
with the above statement in mind let’s consider a case when we bring near
two [Link] we know that energy of the system depends on the surface
area of drops in contact with atmosphere(interfacial energy) and is equal to
γ × (surf acearea) where γ is a constant with dimensions mJ2 .
two droplet’s of mercury having just one point [Link] area exposed is
2 × 43 πr3 .
The straight line in the middle is known as INTERPARTICLE [Link] the
size of interparticle neck increases the surface area exposed to the atmosphere
decreases and hence the overall energy of the system decreases.
The process of decrease in the centre to centre distance of droplets decreases
till it’s [Link] the system have the least surface area and hence the least
[Link] happens when we have more than 2 sphere’s .Also the total decrease
in energy is proportional to no. of sphere’s involved.
Therefore we see that the drop tends to come togeather to decrease the
energy of the system.
Something same happens in other metals too during sintering when applied
pressure along with heat.
2
keypoints to note in this
[Link] porosity of micro structure decreses as centre to centre distance decreases.
[Link] is very less due to formation of interpaticle neck.
[Link] due to this the mechanical properties of the material increses.
[Link] to this micro-structure is refined and homogeneous.
[Link]-structure of product depends mainly on size-size distribution in powder.
[Link] can engineer normal compositions.
[Link] we carefully apply pressure during sintering P/M can be used to make filters
of specified porosity.
1.2.3 Milling
this is basically mixing of powder before processing to ensure homogenity in the
composition.
some exmaples of it are milled TiO,Al .Due to milling they have there char-
acteristic flacky micro-structure which have a lot of overlapping which ensures
very well packing:-
[Link]-used in paints and creams to protect from ultra violet [Link]-sun pro-
tection factor
[Link]-used in firecracker same conf. as Tio.
2 General
[Link]- company which claims to have iron in their product basically puts
Fe powder on the finished product from the top .If you were to takePa strong
P mag-
N M
γnl kn,m
net and move over that we would see Fe powder coming out. λl = n=1 PNm=1
γnl
n=1