The new method of mixing in an advanced ceramics processing

Abstract

Ceramics for today’s engineering applications can be considered as advanced, new or fine, and utilize highly refined materials. These new or advanced ceramics, when used as an engineering material, possess several properties which can be viewed as superior to metal-based systems. These properties place this new group of ceramics in a most attractive position, not only in the area of performance but also cost effectiveness. These properties include high resistance to abrasion, excellent hot strength, chemical inertness, high machining speeds (as tools) and dimensional stability.
The production of most ceramics, including both traditional and advanced ceramics, consists of the following four basic process steps: powder preparation, mixing, forming, densification and finishing.
The existing well known methods of mixing do not permit to produce uniform green (unfired) densities advanced ceramics as they use the pug mills for mixing ceramic materials.
Raw materials powder particles and various dopants or sintering aids added to ceramic powders distributions in ceramic material (usually single clay or one or more clays) during processing are critical in advanced ceramics and advanced ceramic products must be uniform fully dense with high physical chemical properties ceramics.
This paper represents a completely new method of mixing in the basic process of advanced ceramics production.
In the developed method of mixing the powder particles and various dopants or sintering aids added to ceramic powders are uniform distributed in ceramic material forming uniform green (unfired) densities mixture during the process using the vibration in the regime of the process of vibroturbulization.