Analysis of the rheological behavior and stability of 316L stainless steel-TiC powder injection molding feedstock

An experimental rheological study has been performed to evaluate the influence of TiC addition on the rheological behavior and stability of 316L stainless steel powder injection molding (PIM) feedstock. The effects of TiC concentration, solid loading, shear rate and temperature were investigated via capillary rheometer method. The stability of feedstocks was evaluated quantitatively using “instability index”, which describes the threshold beyond which the variation of viscosity becomes unacceptable for PIM purposes. The results show that the rheological behavior of PIM feedstocks highly depends on the blend composition. The addition of TiC particles to the stainless steel powder increases the viscosity of feedstock at relatively low shear rates, i.e. <500 s−1. Furthermore, the feedstock instability increases, particularly at higher solid loading. Nevertheless, with increasing shear rate and temperature, the viscosity decreases and the instability of feedstock improves. At relatively high shear rates, i.e. >2000 s−1, the viscosity of composite feedstocks was lower than that of the mono-component SS feedstock due to the better particle packing efficiency. This article presents the rheological behavior of bimodal powder mixture of stainless steel and TiC powders prepared for PIM application. The influences of blend composition, i.e. the TiC concentration and solid loading, and the processing parameters, i.e. temperature and shear rate, are addressed.