Thermo-mechanical properties of mullite ceramics: New data

Coefficients of elastic stiffnesses and thermal expansion of hot isostatically pressed, reaction-sintered and technical fused-mullite ceramics were measured between 100 and 1673 K in comparison with single crystal mullite employing resonant ultrasound spectroscopy and dilatometry, respectively. Additionally, chemical and phase compositions and the microstructure of the ceramics were studied using X-ray diffraction techniques and scanning electron microscopy. Our studies revealed that despite polycrystallinity and slight porosity of up to 1.6%, the elastic behavior of the hot isostatically pressed ceramics is near to ideal aggregate elastic properties of mullite single crystal, for example, their bulk moduli fit within 0.7% to B = 170.0 GPa of single crystal mullite. On the other hand, with B = 155 GPa, the reaction-sintered mullite behaves significantly softer. The difference can be explained with more tight grain to grain contacts in hot isostatically pressed ceramics as compared to reaction-sintered materials. The thermal expansion of both types of ceramics almost coincides with the corresponding averaged behavior of single crystal mullite. For example, between 573 and 1273 K, the volume expansion coefficients of all these materials are (18.0 +/- 0.3).10(-6) K-1. Obviously, the microstructural features are less important for the macroscopic thermal expansion. Due to heterogeneous microstructure and high alpha-alumina and zirconia contents, the corresponding properties of fused-mullite refractory deviate strongly from those of the other mullite materials.