Abstract

Inspiring from the microstructure of natural biological materials and using ball milling (BM) of Ti powder with stearic acid (SA) and the Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) technique, an in-situ TiC/Ti laminated composites material was successfully elaborated. The use of SA during BM induced i) the fabrication of the flakes powder morphology and ii) the formation of TiC amorphous phase. During SPS sintering the flakes powder were assembled into fully dense laminated materials and the TiC phase recrystallized and precipitated in the form of an interlaminar nanometric reinforcement in the dense material. The results show a contribution of 20% and 5% of the TiC in the increase of the hardness and Young’s modulus of the material respectively. The control of the BM conditions (BM time and SA amount) allows the control of the TiC content formed in situ in the dense Ti/TiC composite material and so of the mechanical properties.

Keywords: TiC/Ti composite materials; Laminated materials; Flakes powder metallurgy; Ball milling; Mechanical properties