Fabrication and simulation of thin sheets by bingham semi-solid/fluid isostatic powder compaction process

It is extremely difficult to fabricate thin plate parts by conventional powder metallurgy processes using dry powder; uni-axial pressing results in inhomogeneous density distribution, which causes distortion or breakage of sintered products; isostatic pressing, which could make compacts with homogeneous density distribution, also encounters serious problems such as breakage due to tensile stress at the surface of powder compacts by rubber mold during unloading process. In this study, newly developed Bingham Semi-solid/fluid Isostatic Pressing (BIP) process is employed to overcome these problems. For demonstration, an attempt is made to fabricate simple disks and wavy sheets with about some hundreds micrometer thickness. We also develop and perform an FEM simulation to investigate deformation patterns and density distribution in powder compact during the process, and compare with experimental results.