Liquid metal infiltration of silicon based alloys into porous carbonaceous materials Part-III: Experimental verification of conversion products and infiltration depth by infiltration of Si-Zr alloy into mixed SiC/graphite preforms
Manoj Naikade, Caroline Hain, Kaja Kastelik, Annapaola Parrilli, Thomas Graule, L. Weber, Alberto Ortona
Abstract
Porous carbonaceous preforms, made from graphite and silicon carbide (SiC) powders, with varying graphite powder mass fractions and particle sizes, were infiltrated at 1500 °C and 1700 °C by Si-8 at. pct Zr alloy to produce dense Si-Zr-SiC composites. The experiments were performed in a graphite chamber vacuum furnace at 10−2 mbar. The most desirable results were obtained for preforms composed of a mixture of graphite and SiC powders, with preforms containing 15–20 % mass fraction of graphite and infiltrated at 1500 °C. The banding of the Zr-rich phase observed in the cross-sections of SiC-C pre- forms infiltrated by the Si-Zr alloy may help in decoding the reactive infiltration process with binary alloys.