Designing particle sizing and packing for flowability and sintered mechanical strength

In this work, alumina powders in five different commercially available size ranges were used to prepare various refractory castable mixtures, defined using the statistical design of mixture experiments (STATISTICA, StatSoft Inc.) and the EMMA 3.3 software (Elkem Materials). Those mixtures were characterized for packing density, Andreasen particle size distribution modulus (q), flowability and after sintering properties, in order to investigate the relationships between these variables. The optimization of matrix and aggregate sizes and matrix-aggregate proportion, subjected to different property requirements, brought to light the relationships between q, specific surface area (SSA) and maximum paste thickness (MPT). Those relationships were investigated for three fundamental processing steps, namely, dry powders, fresh paste and consolidated dried and sintered bodies. The optimized all-alumina castable was found to require 47.5 wt.% of a fine size matrix with high flowability, which provides the necessary flow bed for 52.5 wt.% of coarse aggregates, resulting in a gap-sized particle size distribution, and presented a fresh paste flowability index above 130% with minimum added water (28 mg/m2) and sintered modulus of rupture above 50 MPa.