Abstract
Ceramic cores are the key intermediate components of hollow blades for aero-engine. Conventional processes, such as hot-press molding and gel film casting, face difficulties in fabricating complex-structured ceramic cores due to the complexity of moulds and long process cycles. Stereolithography 3D printing provides a new idea for the fabrication of complex-structured ceramic cores. The effect of sintering temperature on open porosity, bulk density, weight loss rate, shrinkage rate, flexural strength and microstructure of the Al2O3-based ceramic core doped with 10vol.% polysilazane (PSZ) was studied. The sintering mechanism of PSZ-reinforced ceramic cores was analyzed. Results show that the optimum sintering temperature of PSZ-reinforced ceramic cores is 1,450 °C. At this temperature, the open porosity of the ceramic core is 36.60%, bulk density is 2.33 g·cm−3, weight loss rate is 22.11%, shrinkage rate along the X, Y, Z directions is 5.72%, 5.01%, 9.61%, respectively; the flexural strength is 28.794 MPa at 25 °C and 13.649 MPa at 1,500 °C. Properties of 3D printing PSZ-reinforced ceramic cores can meet the casting requirement of superalloy hollow blades, which is expected to promote the industrial application of 3D printing complex structure ceramic cores.
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Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U22A20129), National Science and Technology Major Project (No. 2017-VI-0002-0072), National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFB1106600), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WK5290000003), and Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Foundation of USTC (Nos. CY2022G10 and CY2022C24).
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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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Jin-guo Li Male, Ph.D., Researcher. His research interests mainly focus on superalloy precision casting, especially the ceramic mould casting.
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Dong, Wj., Li, Ql., Chen, Tc. et al. Effect of sintering temperature on microstructure and properties of 3D printing polysilazane reinforced Al2O3 core. China Foundry 20, 387–394 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41230-023-2122-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41230-023-2122-6