Mechanical strength and damage tolerance of highly porous alumina ceramics produced from sintered particle stabilized foams

C Tallon; C Chuanuwatanakul; DE Dunstan; GV Franks

Journal article

Mechanical strength and damage tolerance of highly porous alumina ceramics produced from sintered particle stabilized foams

C Tallon, C Chuanuwatanakul, DE Dunstan, GV Franks

Ceramics International | Published : 2016

DOI: 10.1016/j.ceramint.2016.02.069

Abstract

Highly porous alumina particle stabilized foams were prepared by combining the concepts of particle stabilized foams and gelcasting, using sulfonate surfactants and poly vinyl alcohol (PVA) as the gelcasting polymer. The ceramic samples sintered at 1500 °C for 2 h had porosities from 65% to 93%, with pore sizes in two categories: "big pore" around 300 μm and "small pore", around 100-150 μm, depending on the type and amount of surfactant added. The mechanical behaviour of the foams (axial and diametral compression) depended on the overall porosity and pore size. On average, tensile and compressive strengths around 5 and 16 MPa respectively were measured for samples with bigger pore sizes and ..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

David Dunstan Author

George Franks Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

C. Chuanuwatanakul gratefully acknowledges the University of Melbourne for the scholarship for her Ph.D. thesis. The authors acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP0879953) and from the Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC). The authors also would like thank Roger Curtain for his help with the SEM microscopy and Mr. Steve Adams for his help with the mechanical testing.