Characterization and Investigation of Thermal Behavior of Ceramic Matrix Composites Treated by Spark Plasma Sintering

Abstract

The demand for eco-friendly, low-cost, renewable, and high-strength structural components is now growing day to day. In the present work, SiC, CNTs and glass waste are used as additives in a hybrid pattern with Al2O3. The spark plasma sintering (SPS) is used to fabricate hybrid composites with varying five different weight fractions. Thermal properties (i.e., thermal diffusivity, thermal conductivity, and specific heat capacity) were investigated at both elevated and room temperatures. From the results, the maximum thermal conductivity is achieved as 40 W/mK at the initial weight fraction after SPS at a temperature of 1400 °C. The addition of 4% ceramic composites obtained maximum thermal conductivity (33.93 W/mK) at 1500 °C temperature. With the addition of reinforcement particles, the thermal properties of alumina oxide decreased. At elevated temperatures, thermal conductivity is high with the addition of glass, silicon carbide (SiC) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) particles. It decreases with increasing measurement temperature and weight fraction of reinforcement particles. The specific heat capacity increased with increasing temperature at all compositions. The effect of weight fraction on thermal properties was clearly observed with the microstructure.