Authors:
Amelie Bigeard | Saint-Gobain Research Provence | France
David Jauffres | SIMaP | France
Didier Bouvard | SIMaP | France
Pierrick Vespa | Saint-Gobain Research Provence | France
Elodie Boller | ESRF | France
High performance refractory ceramics in high temperature applications for the glass industry are designed to resist the extreme conditions of glass furnaces operations, namely thermal, chemical (corrosion) and thermomechanical stresses. Mullite-zirconia-based refractories withstand well these conditions. In this work, such a refractory is studied to understand the mechanisms of consolidation of such a product during sintering.
The evolution with temperature of physical (e.g. density, porosity, RX diffraction), thermal (e.g. Differential Scanning Calorimetry, dilatometry) and mechanical (e.g. 3-point flexural test, resonance frequency damping analysis) properties is studied to improve the understanding of the thermomechanical behavior of the material. For instance, the evolution of the dynamic modulus of elasticity, shows that two main phenomena coexist in the material, namely sintering and microcracking. The latter one is driven by the difference of thermal expansion coefficients between the different constituents and the zirconia phase transformation that lead to volume changes [1,2]. Impact of binders on consolidation steps has also been assessed. Furthermore, in-situ X-Ray tomography [3] at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility are performed to study the evolution of the microstructure during a thermal cycle and relate it to the thermomechanical behavior previously observed.
[1] E. C. Subbarao, Microcracking in Ceramics and Acoustic Emission, 1991
[2] Edwige Yeugo Fogaing, CARACTERISATION A HAUTE TEMPERATURE DES PROPRIETES D’ELASTICITE DE REFRACTAIRES ELECTROFONDUS ET DE BETONS REFRACTAIRES, 2006
[3] R. Fernandez Gutierrez, Effect of solution heat treatment on microstructure and damage accumulation in cast Al-Cu alloys, 2017.