Temperature behavior of exothermic reaction of Al/Ni multilayer powder materials based on cold-rolling and pulverizing method

Abstract

In this paper, the characteristics of self-propagating exothermic reactions of an Al/Ni multilayer powder materials fabricated by a cold-rolling and powdering procedure are reported as initial findings of the first trial on a heat source for various applications with the energy-saving feature. Experimental results showed that, following the reaction of the developed Al/Ni multilayer powder materials in air atmosphere, the maximum temperature increased from approximately 1450 °C to over 1768 °C with increasing number of passes from 20 to 40 in cold-rolling. Furthermore, observations by scanning electron microscopy and crystallographic identification by X-ray diffraction measurements showed that the multilayer structure of powdered Al/Ni after 40 passes of cold-rolling was deformed, became thinner with below sub-micrometer thickness, and almost completely reacted to NiAl intermetallic compounds. It is possible that optimizing cold-rolling conditions enables us to control exothermic heat, which will be useful for heat sources.