Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Fibers

Fibers can be made of any material like ceramics, glass, polymers, metals, etc..
They have a huge impact on the modern technology. If emphasized one can say that it can strengthen a composites having fibers in a matrix.

Fiberglass is the most common and a very old application of fibers. Fiberglass is a composite with polymer matrix with glass fiber and thus the name given fiberglass or glass fiber.

Instead of these glass fibers, fibers of others materials mentioned above also can be used to make different materials with different properties and will change the way of the world that exist today.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Extrusion of Ceramics

Extrusion is one of the main process and an old process for materials engineers. With extrusion you can make intricate shapes with a plastic paste. Even ceramics can be processed using this method. Someone could think that it is only be done to plastics, but as mentioned above metals and ceramics can also be extruded.

Type of extruder
1. Ram type extruder
2. Screw type extruder

Ceramic extrusion (Considering ram type extruder)
To extrude ceramic into a required shape, one must formulate and create a paste according to his/her requirements. The person should think about its plasticity, viscosity, thixotropy, etc. (basically the rheology of the paste) and the pressure it needs to do a good extrusion, the speed of the extrusion, etc.. It is seen that if there is not enough pressure there will be defects on the extruded parts and also all the other parameters are also very important for the quality of the final product.

--cheers

Friday, November 14, 2008

After a long time

Hello Everyone,

I am now doing my internship in Empa, Switzerland. It is a great company which does lot of researches attached to the industry. It's a really new experience for me.
More things later.

Have fun. :-)