Densification and conolidation of powders by equal channel angular pressing

Abstract

In this study, bottom-up type powder processing and top-down type SPD (severe plastic deformation) approaches were combined in order to achieve both full density and grain refinement of metallic powders with least grain growth, which is considered as a bottle neck of the bottom-up method that uses the conventional powder metallurgy of compaction and sintering. ECAP (Equal channel angular pressing), one of the most promising method in SPD, was used for the powder consolidation. In the ECAP process of not only solid but also powder metals, it is important to get a good understanding of the density as well as internal stress, strain and strain rate distribution. We investigated the consolidation, plastic deformation and microstructure evolution behavior of the metallic powders during ECAP using an experimental method. It was found that high mechanical strength could be achieved effectively due to the well bonded powder contact surface during ECAP process of gas atomized Al-Si powders. The experimental results show that SPD processing of powders is a viable method to achieve both fully density and nanostructured materials.