Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Fracture Toughness Of Ceramic Moulds For Investment Casting With Ice Patterns, Qingbin Liu, Ming-Chuan Leu, Von Richards

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Ice patterns can be used to make ceramic investment moulds for metal castings. Owing to the characteristics of ice, the ceramic mould must be made at subzero temperatures and consequently, requires a different formulation than shells built at room temperature. Success of this process depends greatly on the fracture toughness of mould materials. The present paper describes the experimental results of fracture toughness of mould materials processed from different compositions. The Taguchi method was used to reduce the trial runs. The parameters considered included the ratio of fibre containing fused silica and aluminosilicate powders, the volume of binder and the …