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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Dynamic consolidation of super-hard materials. Technical report, 1 October 1988-31 December 1989

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6493369

Shock consolidation experiments were conducted via flyer impact on synthetic diamond (6-12 microns) and cubic boron nitride (c-BN) (4-8 microns) admixed with SiC whisker, Si3N4 whisker, SiC powder and Si powder contained in stainless steel capsules in the shock pressure range 10-30 GPa. Scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy imaging of the samples revealed no plastic deformation or melting of diamond and virtually no deformation of c-BN, whereas the SiC and Si3N4 whiskers were extensively melted and recrystallized into bundle-shaped crystallites. In contrast, SiC powder mixed with diamond was also melted but demonstrated equant grain growth. A new mixture model of powder plus whisker materials is formulated on the basis of sphere-rod mixing and packing experiments. The model assigns excess porosity to the zone around whiskers and yields a better description of the energy deposition mechanism of the consolidation of powder-whisker systems. Some of the experiments employed Sawaoka's post-shock annealing technique, in which the sample is sandwiched between two layers of a mixture of titanium powder plus carbon. Very well consolidated samples were obtained with post-shock heating under shock pressures of only about 12 GPa.

Research Organization:
California Inst. of Tech., Pasadena, CA (USA). Seismological Lab.
OSTI ID:
6493369
Report Number(s):
AD-A-224460/6/XAB; CNN: DAAL03-88-K-0199
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English